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BORDERLAND  STUDIES. 

GOULD. 


OTHER  BOOKS  BY  GEORGE  M.  GOULD,  M.D. 


The  lUastrated  Dictionary  of  Medicine,  Biology,  and 
Allied  Sciences.  Being  an  Exhaustive  Lexicon  of  Medicine 
and  those  Sciences  Collateral  to  It :  Biology  (Zoology  and  Botany), 
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Philadelphia  Hospital,  etc.  With  many  Useful  Tables  and  numerous 
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P.  BLAKISTON,  SON  &  CO.,  Publishers,.  Philadelphia. 


Borderland  Studies 


MISCELLANEOUS    ADDRESSES    AND    ESSAYS    PERTAINING    TO 

MEDICINE  AND  THE  MEDICAL  PROFESSION,  AND  THEIR 

RELATIONS  TO  GENERAL  SCIENCE  AND  THOUGHT 


GEORGE   M.  GOULD,  A.M.,  M.D. 

FORMERLY    EDITOR   OF  "  THE   MEDICAL    NEWS." 


PHILADELPHIA 
P.    BLAKISTON,    SON    &    CO, 

IOI2     WALNUT     STREET 
1896 


Copyright,  1896,  by  George  M.  Gould,  M.D. 


PIICM  OF  «M.  F.  FILL  ft  OO., 

1820-24  SANtOM  rT., 

PMILAOCLPMIA. 


^ 


< 


c5 


4  PREFACE 

» 

Continued  inquiries  for  many  of  the  Essays  contained 

r-         in  this  volume,  at  present  out  of  print,  have  seemed  to 

'^^         justify  their  republication.     To  these  I  have  added  five  not 

o         hitherto  published,  and  a  number  of  editorial  articles  from 


the  Medical  Neivs,  similar  in  character  or  object  to  that  of 


^         the  general  collection.     For  courteous  permission  to  re- 
^         publish  I  am  under  obligations  to  the  proprietors  of  The 
Forum,  The  Medical  News,  The  Monist,  The  Open  Court,  and 


1—         to  the  Council  of  the  American  Academy  of  Medicine. 


GEORGE  M.  GOULD. 

Philadelphia,  April,  i8g6. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

1 .  Vivisection, 9 

2.  Concerning  Medical  Language, 40 

3.  The  Role  of  the  I^aternal  Instinct  in  Organic  Evolution 59 

4.  Life  and  Its  Physical  Basis,     ....       94 

5.  Is  Medicine  a  Science? 131 

6.  The  Duty  of  the  Community  to  Medical  Science, 144 

7.  Charity- Organization  and  Medicine 158 

8.  Hospitalism, 175 

9.  The  Etiology,  Diagnosis,  and  Treatment  of  the  Prevalent  Epidemic 

of  Quackery, 197 

10.  The  Untrustworthiness  of  the  Lay- Press  in  Medical  Matters,    .    .    .  222 

11.  The  Disorganization  of  Medical  Science, 226 

12.  Concerning  Specialism, 230 

13.  Medicine  and  City-Noises, 237 

14.  Medical  Aspects  of  Life  Insurance, 243 

15.  Foot-Ball 248 

16.  Muscular  Development  and  Use  the  Conditions  of  Health,    ....  255 

17.  Everybody's  Medical  Duty, 258 

18.  The  Power  of  Will  in  Disease 277 

19.  The  Apotheosis  of  Hysteria  and  Whimsicality, 280 

20.  Character, 287 

21.  The  Modern  Frankenstein, 292 

22.  Dreams,  Sleep,  and  Consciousness, 3*9 

23.  Human  Life  Under  Denied  Sensation, 351 

24.  Immortality, 356 


VU 


•'VIVISECTION."* 

Recently  one  of  the  best  scientific  men  in  America 
said  to  me,  "  I  would  make  thousands  of  animals  suffer  the 
most  atrocious  torments  for  a  thousand  years  if  thereby  a 
human  being  could  be  spared  one  pain."  This  was  said 
by  one  who  is  a  physician,  one  not  himself  a  vivisector, 
and  one  who  is  a  particularly  moral  and  gentle-mannered 
man.  There  was,  however,  a  certain  peculiar  emphasis 
and  even  passionateness  in  his  manner  when  he  said  this, 
that  betrayed  the  subconscious  feeling  that  he  was  exag- 
gerating. It  seemed  to  me  a  noteworthy  and  significant 
utterance. 

To  this  testimony  I  will  add  the  words  of  another  scient- 
ist, also  a  physician,  and  also  not  himself  a  vivisector : — 

In  answer  to  objections  against  vivisection  in  public 
schools  this  gentleman  wrote :  "  I  certainly  think  that  child- 
ren and  every  one  ought  to  be  familiarized  with  the  sight 
of  blood,  the  pangs  of  disease,  and  the  solemn  event  of 
dying.  Death  and  pain  should  not  be  concealed ;  they  are 
the  greatest  of  educators,  for  they  teach  us  the  value  of 
life  in  its  highest  measure."  (The  logical  conclusion  there- 
fore would  seem  to  be  that  the  more  death  and  pain  the 
better.)  These  words  were  written,  not  spoken  in  the  haste 
of  discussion,  and  were  in  response  to  a  request  for  candid, 
well-considered  scientific  judgment,  to  be  published  for  the 
world's  pondering.  To  these  two  many  others  might  be 
added,  but  it  is  unnecessary. 

*  Delivered  at  the  Meeting  of  the  American  Academy  of  Medicine,  at 
Atlanta,  May  2,  i8g6. 

2  9 


lo  "  VIVISECTION." 

Now  I  do  not,  for  the  moment,  aim  at  any  criticism  of 
these  statements,  nor  of  the  essential  truth  or  error  I  may 
think  is  contained  in  them.  I  adduce  them  and  all  the 
practices  of  "  vivisection  "  only  as  a  thesis  to  be  fixed  in  the 
mind,  and  over  against  which  we  may  now  place  the  anti- 
thesis. Without  especial  quotation,  this  antithesis  consists 
of  the/<2r/  of  large  and  powerful  societies,  counting  in  their 
membership  hundreds  of  the  great  names  of  intellectual 
and  social  life, — societies  devoted  to  the  total  abolition  or 
prohibition  of  "  vivisection."  In  the  antithesis  must  also 
be  included  the  fact  of  laws  enacted  and  proposed  for  the 
prohibition,  limitation,  or  governmental  control  of  all 
scientific  experimentation  upon  animals. 

And  now  let  us  keep  firmly  before  the  attention  the  un- 
criticised,  unmodified  facts, — the  thesis  of  the  justification 
and  the  practice  of  unlimited  vivisection,  on  the  part  of 
most  scientific  men,  and,  on  the  part  of  antivivisection 
societies  the  antithesis  of  zealous  and  organized  opposition, 
more  or  less  successful,  to  any  and  all  vivisection. 

Is  it  not  plain  that  there  must  be  extremism  and  exag- 
geration somewhere  ?  I  think  wise  men  -have  long  ago 
come  to  the  sensible  conclusion  that  truth  does  not  dwell 
with  extremes.  Partizanship  is  not  conducive  either  to 
learning  the  absolute  truth  or  to  a  convenient  modus 
vivendi.  hi  medio  tutissimus  ibis  is  a  pretty  good  old  road 
for  comfort,  either  in  intellectual  or  in  any  other  traveling. 

In  this  connection  it  readily  occurs  to  you  that  a  tertium 
quid  has  been  omitted  from  our  resume  of  the  situation, 
and  that  a  large  proportion  of  science-loving  minds  would 
not  assent  to  the  thesis  involved  in  the  statements  quoted 
— whilst  an  equally  high  proportion  of  intelligent  laymen 
would  not  join  the  ranks  of  the  total  prohibitionists.  And 
this  is  true,  but  not  so  true  as  might  be  supposed.  Mug- 
wumpery  is  sadly  lacking  in  this  controversy. 

I  confess,  after  a  somewhat  extensive  review  of  the  liter- 


"VIVISECTION."  u 

ature,  to  a  feeling  of  pitying  disgust  of  both  parties  in  this 
controversy,  and  viewing  the  wild  and  almost  insane  hys- 
terics or  dogmatic  bitterness  of  both  controversialists,  one 
quite  despairs,  and  almost  wishes  that  a  sort  of  Kilkenny- 
cat  battle  might  leave  peace  by  extermination. 

There  seems  to  be  a  sorry  tendency  for  good  people  to 
rush  to  arms  hotly  for,  or  dead  against,  the  other  party, 
and  to  lose  that  same  self-control  and  judiciality  of  dispo- 
sition which  saves  us  from  woful  error  in  all  other  affairs  of 
life.  Sensible  people  smile  at  the  unsaintly  simplicity  of 
one  who  thinks  that  all  political  goodness  is  covered  by  one 
of  the  meaningless  names,  democracy  or  republicanism, 
whilst  thinking  that  all  governmental  and  legislative  devil- 
try naturally  come  under  the  other  meaningless  word.  If 
this  is  so  in  politics  is  it  not  much  more  true,  or  should  it 
not  be,  of  a  definite  and  clear  concern  of  science  ?  It  is 
my  purpose  to  try  in  a  general  way  to  discover  some  happy 
middle  way,  and  to  ask  if  we  may  not  lift  this  unfortunate 
question  out  of  the  silly  bitterness  and  partizanship  into 
which  it  has  fallen.  To  do  so  it  is  plain  that  we  must  seek 
to  make  clear  the  truth  and  the  error  in  the  position  of 
each  partizan,  and  thus  to  unite  the  good,  dispassionate 
people  of  both  parties  in  a  common  cause,  and  by  harmon- 
ious methods,  make  all  to  work  for  ends  desired  of  both, 
and  higher  perhaps  than  either  alone  have  heretofore 
sought. 

What  is  the  Truth  and  Strength  of  the  Antivivisec- 
tion  Party. — Let  us  now  leave  out  of  sight  all  criticism,  just 
or  unjust,  all  extremism  and  exaggeration,  all  sentimentality 
and  nonintellectuality,  and  seek  to  learn  the  essential 
truth  whence  the  antivivisectionists  derive  their  strength, 
and  which  must  become  at  least  one  of  the  fundamental 
principles  of  the  credo  of  sensible  people.  The  secret  of 
wisdom  is  to  learn  from  your  enemy;  the  true  philosopher 
knows  that   no   controversialist   has   all  the   truth    or  is 


12  "  VIVISECTION." 

wholly  in  error,  that  opinion  wins  credence  only  by  the 
truth  hidden,  however  deeply,  somewhere  in  it. 

It  can  scarcely  be  doubted  that  the  primary  condition  of 
human  progress  out  of  the  most  utter  savagery,  consisted 
in  the  fact  of  the  primitive  man  calling  to  his  service  and 
aid  the  wild  beasts  about  him.  This  view  is  brought  out 
with  clearness  in  the  most  admirable  book  of  Professor 
Shaler  on  Domesticated  Animals.  "  The  process  of  domesti- 
cation," he  says,  "  has  a  far-reaching  aspect,  a  dignity,  we 
may  fairly  say  a  grandeur,  that  few  human  actions  possess. 
If  we  can  impress  this  view,  it  will  be  certain  to  awaken 
men  to  a  larger  sense  of  their  responsibility  for,  and  their 
duty  to,  the  creatures  which  we  have  taken  from  their 
older  natural  state  into  the  social  order.  It  will,  at  the 
same  time,  enlarge  our  conceptions  of  our  own  place  in 
the  order  of  the  world." 

It  was  by  the  domestication  of  wild  animals  that  the 
savage  got  his  first  lift  out  of  lowest  barbarism ;  their  food, 
help,  clothing  and  protection,  directly  and  indirectly  en- 
abled one  tribe  or  race  to  conquer  the  rival  neighbor. 
It  did  more  : — It  helped  to  found  and  fix  the  idea  and  to 
establish  the  fact  of  home-life,  upon  which  all  further  pro- 
gress depended,  and  upon  which  civilization  itself  rests. 
It  did  more: — During  thousands  and  perhaps  millions  of 
years  this  daily  association  with  animals  drew  man  out  of 
the  bigoted  subjectivity  which  is  the  great  obstacle  of  all 
mental  development,  as  objectivity,  sympathetic  knowing 
of  other  beings,  is  the  condition  of  mental  progress.  His 
animals  became  for  man  a  sort  of  mirror  wherein  he  saw 
himself  reflected,  and  from  this  self-study  in  others  there 
has  gradually  and  progressively  dawned  upon  humanity  a 
faint  and  growing  recognition  of  the  truth  of  the  unity 
and  interdependence  of  all  life.  Tat  twain  asi,  this  (animal) 
art  thou,  was  the  grand  truth  condensed  into  a  sentence 
epitomizing  much  of  the  wisdom  of  Brahminic  civilization. 


« VIVISECTION."  13 

Forth  from  the  unknown,  inexplicable,  awful,  by  the 
subtle,  mysterious  agency  of  cell-life  and  of  sexualism, 
springs  the  million-fold,  ever  renascent  forms  of  living 
things,  each  dependent  upon  all  others,  just  as  literally 
and  exactly  as  in  physics  or  chemistry  each  particle  is  in- 
terrelated with  others.  No  animal  or  man  can  live  without 
the  aid  of  the  vegetable,  no  animal  or  man  without  vital 
relations  with  other  animal  forms,  no  man  independent  of 
any  or  all  other  men.  Each  is  his  brother's  keeper,  whether 
the  "  brother"  be  the  blade  of  grass,  the  bacillus,  the  cow, 
the  savage,  or  the  lawmaker. 

Civilization  is  but  just  beginning  to  grow  conscious  of  this 
fact,  but  the  consciousness  has  been  aroused  only  by  hard 
knocks.  It  has  taken  great  disasters  of  flood  and  drouth 
and  loss,  only  to  begin  to  get  into  our  heads  the  lesson  of 
the  stupidity  of  the  denudation  of  the  country  of  forests. 
Tuberculosis  in  cattle  is  teaching  us  that  the  cow  is  some- 
thing more  than  a  digesting,  milk-giving,  and  meat-produc- 
ing mechanism.  The  value  of  the  product  of  the  domestic 
hen  is  greater  than  that  of  all  our  silver  mines.  The  loss 
of  harvests  by  insects  is  millions  of  dollars  annually.  The 
death-rate  of  the  human  race  depends  upon  our  knowledge 
and  control  of  the  laws  of  lowly  forms  of  life,  and  when 
that  knowledge  and  control  are  perfect  we  may  halve  or 
quarter  the  mortality. 

To  this  conception,  science,  reaching  always  last  toward 
the  heart  of  the  mystery,  is  slowly  now  groping  her  way. 
But  the  truth  is  already  plain :  Commensalism,  cosmic 
commensalism,  we  may  denominate  the  scientific  aspect  of 
the  truth  of  what  we  have  called  the  unity  and  interde- 
pendence of  all  the  world's  life.  We  are  all  brothers  or 
cousins  and  we  feed  at  the  same  table.  There  is  no  truth 
plainer  than  this,  and  disease  and  dependence  are  daily 
convincing  us  of  the  existence  of  the  close  relationship  and 
of  the  fatuity  of  ignoring  the  rights  of  all  living  forms. 


14  "  VIVISECTION." 

Now  it  is  the  incomparable  merit  of  the  antivisectionists 
and  their  allies  that  they  have  first  recognized  this  all- 
important  truth,  I  agree  with  you  if  you  dissent  saying 
they  have  only  seen  it  partially,  narrowly,  and  emotionally, 
but  that  is  no  great  criticism  after  all.  They  have  seen  it, 
dumbly,  and  partially  if  you  please,  but  still  most  vividly. 
Their  rational  account  of  the  matter  may  be  faulty  and 
even  ridiculous,  but  the  heart  always  outruns  the  head,  the 
emotions  always  point  out  the  objects  and  motives  to  the 
intellect.  Animals,  all  the  worlds  of  living  things,  have 
rights  per  se,  and  the  sooner  science  builds  upon  that  basis 
the  speedier  will  be  the  coming  of  her  kingdom.  Com- 
mensalism  is  an  inexpugnable  fact.  Utter  and  reckless  use 
of  any  living  thing  for  human  selfishness,  with  complete 
indifference  to  the  nature  and  rights  of  that  living  thing,  is 
as  unscientific,  as  impolitic,  and  as  suicidal  as  was  slavery. 
It  is  no  great  foresight  to  leave  the  hive  enough  honey  for 
it  to  live  upon  through  the  winter.  That  the  honey  should 
be  left  because  we  love  the  bees  is  also  quite  as  good  a 
motive  as  because  it  is  good  policy  or  to  our  selfish  interest. 
Sympathy  or  sentimentalism,  properly  understood,  seems 
to  me  eminently  proper  and  good,  and  not  a  reason  for  con- 
tempt or  blame.  "The  great  tide  of  mercy  and  justice 
which  marks  our  modern  civilization  had  first  to  break 
down  the  grievous  and  strongly  founded  evils  of  human 
slavery.  Having  effected  that  great  work,  the  sympathetic 
motives  are  moving  on  to  a  similar  conflict  with  the  moral 
ills  which  arise  from  an  improper  treatment  of  those  slaves 
of  a  lower  estate,  the  domesticated  animals."     {Shaler) 

To  have  recognized  even  emotionally  the  fact  of  Life's 
commensalism,  to  have  earnestly,  personally,  vitally  recog- 
nized the  fact  of  the  unity,  relationship,  and  interdepend- 
ence of  all  life,  to  have  seen  it,  however  partially  and 
narrowly,  but  so  acutely  as  to  inspire  a  profoundly  sincere 
and  unselfish  zeal, — this  seems   to   me   the  ground  and 


"VIVISECTION."  15 

strength  of  the  antivivisectionist  cause.  Upon  this  basis 
they  may  safely  build,  for  it  is  as  inevitable  as  is  the  fact  of 
evolution  itself,  that  evolution  is  builded,  and  will  continue 
its  development,  upon  that  principle.  Whatever  contradicts 
it  will  be  destroyed,  because  humanity  and  science  will 
both  unite  to  work  out  our  destiny  in  obedience  to  it.  In 
our  upstart  egotism,  and  flushed  with  scientific  success,  we 
have  at  times  so  placed  and  so  expressed  ourselves  as  to 
give  the  impression  that  we  were  not  only  indifferent  to  but 
derisive  of  this  principle  and  fact,  and  our  vain  conceit  has 
been  answered  by  a  responsive  indignation  which  has 
placed  in  the  Antivivisection-lists  many  of  the  greatest 
names  of  our  civilization.  If  we  have  but  a  fool's  wisdom 
we  will  not  repeat  this  unpardonable  error.  As  protesters, 
the  strength  of  the  antivivisection-protest  has  been,  or  has 
seemed  to  have  been  in  the  denial  of  what  has  been,  or  of 
what  has  seemed  to  have  been,  a  contemptuous  ignoring 
of  the  unity-idea,  an  indifference  to  the  rights  per  se  of  the 
animal-world,  an  outrageous  hypertrophy  of  human  ego- 
tism. Wherever  such  denial  or  forgetfulness  of  commen- 
salism,  such  non-recognition  of  animal-right  has  existed, 
wherever  such  inordinate  exaggeration  of  human  right  has 
shown  itself,  the  vivisection-protest  is  valid,  and  will  prove 
to  be  valid  so  long  as  time  and  life  lasts.  It  is  at  once 
good  sense  and  good  science,  to  acknowledge  this,  and  to 
build  future  action  upon  the  acknowledgment. 

The  "Weakness  and  Errors  of  Antivivisectionists, 
are,  however,  many  and  patent.  They  may  all  be  summed 
up  in  the  one  criticism  that  these  good  people  have  not  in- 
tellectualized  their  emotions.  They  have  been  zealous  in 
the  right  but  so  blindly  passionate  against  but  one  form  of 
wrong,  that  their  zeal  has  all  the  attributes  of  wrong.  The 
emotions  are  good  incentives  but  poor  guides.  They  need 
to  be  rationalized  and  the  way  lit  up  by  the  sun  of  intellect. 
Passions,  angers,  indignations,  need  the  balance-wheel  of 


l6  « VIVISECTION." 

logic  to  make  them  keep  the  world's  true  time.  We 
gladly  acknowledge  and  fervently  contend  that,  once  for 
all,  the  sentiment  of  kindness  to  animals  is  an  acquirement 
of  modern  civilization  most  profoundly  precious  and  des- 
tined to  grow  brighter,  clearer,  and  more  practiced  with 
every  step  of  humanity's  advance.  Whoever  disallows,  or 
derides,  or  even  ignores  it,  is  doomed.  Let  his  name,  in 
the  name  of  science  and  of  humanity,  be  anathema ! 

But  there  are  perhaps  ten  or  twenty  million  barns  in  the 
United  States  with  cracks  everywhere  through  which  one 
may  put  the  hand.  Has  any  vivisection-society  organized 
itself  to  protect  the  millions  of  shivering  animals  who  suffer 
long  bitter  nights  for  long  winter-months  after  laboring  all 
day  for  their  careless  owners  ?  I  would  like  to  join  such 
a  society.  There  are  billions  of  fish  and  crustacean  animals 
that  are  killed  with  slow  tortures  dragged  out  for  days. 
Who  has  protected  them  from  unkindness  ?  In  one  ship- 
ment of  cattle  from  their  free,  breezy  western  homes  to 
Eastern  or  English  markets,  there  is  a  thousandfold  more 
awful  agony  than  ever  was  in  all  the  laboratories  of  all  the 
world.  What  about  the  wretched  hunting  and  gaming- 
business  ?  What  about  the  slaughter-houses  ?  Is  death 
in  them  preferable  to  death  in  a  laboratory  ?  No  sensible 
man,  good  friends,  objects  to  your  objection  against  cruelty 
in  laboratories.  Sensible  people  will  aid  you  to  stop  lab- 
oratory-cruelty, but  sensible  people  will  ask  you  to  extend 
the  realm  of  your  activity  to  other  and  to  all  places  where 
cruelty  exists,  and  to  expend  your  main  force  where  it  is 
most  needed.  At  present  you  are  open  to  the  charge  that 
you  care  for  but  one  kind  of  cruelty  and  that  a  small  order. 
Do  you  want  to  educate  the  world  in  kindness  ?  Then  by 
all  odds  do  so  by  going  to  the  millions  who  are  ignorantly 
and  continuously  unkind,  not  only  to  the  few  dozen  whom 
you  have  selected.  Is  it  cruelty  you  protest  against,  or  is 
it  only  the  cruelty  of  a  certain  small  class  of  men  ? 


"VIVISECTION."  17 

Another  crying  error  of  antivivisectionists  is  calling  death 
vivisection.  Some  time  ago  a  most  sensational  account, 
with  roaring  headlines  and  awful  pictures,  was  published  in 
a  New  York  newspaper  of  the  vivisection  atrocities  carried 
on  in  the  Physiologic  Department  of  Cornell  University. 
To  call  the  cutting  up  of  meat  in  a  butcher-shop  vivisec- 
tion, and  to  have  aroused  indignation  against  the  poor 
butcher  by  headlines  and  pictures,  would  have  been  just  as 
honest  and  true.  For  the  truth  is  that  in  this  University 
there  has  not  been  a  single  painful  experiment  since  it 
opened.  Perhaps  five  hundred  dead  animals  are  there  annu- 
ally dissected,  but  only  after  a  most  humane  and  painless 
death.  Now  this  instance  is  only  illustrative  of  the  general 
habit  of  antivivisectionists  of  charging  those  who  kill  ani- 
mals for  scientific  purposes  with  cruelty  and  "  vivisection." 
At  the  same  time  against  death  in  slaughter-houses,  by 
fish-dealers,  hunters  etc.,  there  is  no  charge  made,  and  no 
blame  is  laid  upon  them.  This  is  an  unfortunate  condition 
of  mind.  Scientific  men  may  justly  claim  that  to  those 
who  ruthlessly  hunt  animals  for  sport  and  thus  produce 
directly  and  indirectly  a  terrible  amount  of  suffering,  should 
at  least  be  meted  out  a  hatred  and  denunciation  as  fervid 
as  against  those  who  use  them  unselfishly  in  the  service  of 
humanity  and  science.  Not  to  have  done  this,  to  have 
been  guilty  of  this  blind  injustice,  will  ever  remain  the 
shame  and  weakness  of  the  antivivisection  movement.  I 
have  yet  to  learn  that  indignation  against  one  kind  of 
cruelty  rightly  absolves  a  just  conscience  from  the  obliga- 
tion of  truthfulness  and  sincerity. 

Indeed  this  principle  deserves  extension;  until  antivivi- 
sectionists become  practical  vegetarians,  they  are  at  present 
occupying  a  shameful  and  stultifying  position.  By  "  the 
total  prohibition  of  vivisection  "  they  mean  and  represent 
among  other  things  the  abolition  of  death  in  the  laboratory. 
But  of  course  simple  death  in  the  laboratory  and  that  in 


1 8  "VIVISECTION." 

the  slaughter-house  or  fish-boat  must  alike  be  justified  by 
the  objects  and  methods  of  the  death.  In  the  one  case  it 
is  for  the  good  of  science,  the  conquering  of  disease,  and 
the  life  of  humanity.  In  the  other  it  is  to  feed  the  single 
body  of  the  eater  of  meat.  The  illogic  and  ludicrous  posi- 
tion of  the  meat-eating  prohibitional  vivisectionist  is  thus 
worthy  of  the  limitless  contempt  of  rational  beings. 

It  thus  becomes  clear  that  the  problem  of  the  whole 
controversy  widens  itself  out  into  the  greater  problem  of 
the  use  of  the  animal-world  as  food.  When  the  prohibi- 
tionist becomes  a  vegetarian,  he  is  worthy  of  respect  as  a 
logical  person,  but  while  he  still  eats  meat,  utterly  indiffer- 
ent to  the  death  or  kind  of  death  his  animal  endured,  and 
passionately  indignant  against  vivisectionists,  he  becomes 
a  very  silly  butt  of  ridicule.  The  antivivisectionist  must 
therefore  straighten  out  this  tangle  and  make  theory  and 
practice  tally,  before  he  is  worth  the  consideration  of  rea- 
sonable people. 

In  order  to  be  clear  and  not  to  evade  any  issue,  I  may 
add  that  personally  I  object  to  doing  my  own  butchering. 
I  would  rather  be  a  vegetarian,  although  I  am  not  so  silly 
as  to  seek  to  avoid  my  moral  responsibility  for  the  death  I 
order  with  my  cutlet.  Butchering  for  mere  sport's  sake, 
called  "  hunting,"  seems  to  me  to  touch  a  lower  depth  of 
degradation,  to  which  I  trust  never  to  fall.  Trap-shooting 
and  senatorial  gunning  are  of  course  unspeakably  low.  In- 
deed, the  practice  of  vegetarianism  would  seem  to  be  de- 
feative  of  the  very  object  it  has  in  view.  I  think. we  eat 
too  much  meat,  that  we  are  too  indifferent  to  the  animal 
right,  careless  of  the  manner  of  death,  etc.,  etc.,  but  total 
prohibition  here  would  not  only  slow  down  the  march  of 
humanity's  progress,  but  it  would  be  sadly  detrimental  to 
animalian  progress.  As  a  matter  of  fact  it  has  not  been 
human  hunger  or  appetite  that  in  an  appalling  manner  is 
exterminating  whole  species  and  genera  of  animals  from 


"VIVISECTION."  19 

the  face  of  the  earth,  but  it  is  the  outrageous  fury  of  the 
hunter  and  of  female  vanity.  Under  proper  restrictions  and 
laws  the  use  of  animals  as  food  has  served,  and  may  still 
further  serve  to  perfect  and  beautify  the  animal  world.  Death 
alone,  uncruel  death,  for  a  useful  purpose,  least  of  all  that 
in  the  laboratory,  threatens  no  animal  genus  with  extinc- 
tion, and  in  all  our  facing  of  the  question,  we  need  only  to 
keep  in  mind  the  object,  the  extent,  and  the  method,  of 
our  death-dealing.  But  while  we  have  a  ray  of  reason  or 
a  line  of  logic  in  our  minds,  we  must  protest  against  the 
antivivisectionist  confusion,  illogicality,  and  even  misrepre- 
sentation, that  stigmatizes  laboratory-killing  as  vivisection, 
whilst  innocently  dining  upon  the  products  of  the  slaugh- 
ter-house ;  that  would  prohibit  painless  laboratory-experi- 
ment, and  laboratory-killing,  while  obliviously  passing  a 
restaurant-window,  or  a  train  of  stock-cars.* 

Again,  antivivisectionists  weaken  their  own  cause,  lessen 
the  number  of  their  sensible  adherents,  and  do  violence  to 
their  own  sense  of  truth  by  their  intolerable  denial  of  any 
least  good  whatsoever  gained  by  and  through  vivisection. 
Now  even  in  a  good  cause  untruth  does  not  pay.  I  regret 
that  I  have  not  the  space  and  time  at  present  t©  adduce  a 
few  examples  out  of  hundreds  that  might  easily  be  given 
to  show  how  erroneous  is  this  dogmatism.  The  proofs 
have  often  been  gathered  and  it  is  unnecessary  to  repeat 
the  time-worn  story.  Thousands  of  children,  for  example, 
are  to-day  growing  to  manhood  and  womanhood  who 
would  have  died  without  the  diphtheria-antitoxin.  (But 
both  sides  to  the  controversy  forget  that  the  negative  re- 
sults, the  showings  that,  except  to  the  dispassionate  in- 
vestigator, are  never  shown,  are  quite  as  important  in  a 


*  See  a  series  of  excellent  articles  by  J.  Lawrence-Hamilton,  m.r.c.s.,  on 
Torturing  and  Starving  Fish,  Catching  and  "  Crimping  "  Fish,  etc.,  in  The 
Lancet  of  August  17,  August  31,  et  seq.,  1889. 


ao  "  VIVISECTION." 

scientific  sense  as  the  positive  rewards  of  experimental 
medicine.)  In  reading  these  tiresome  reiterations  of  dog- 
matism and  denial,  in  witnessing  the  repetitions  year  in 
and  out  of  this  eyeless  prejudice,  one  feels  like  despairing 
of  the  sincerity  and  sanity  of  the  human  mind.  I  perfectly 
agree  that  vivisection-experimentation  has  often  been  re- 
sultless,  and  worse  than  resultless, — the  great  men  of 
science,  the  great  vivisectors  themselves  freely  admit  it — 
but  to  contend  that  every  such  experiment  has  led  either 
to  resultlessness  or  even  to  error, — this  only  could  a  heated 
controversialist  bring  himself  to  say.  The  least  investiga- 
tion of  the  facts,  and  the  least  impartiality  of  judgment 
would  insure  against  such  blundering. 

Yet  another  way  in  which  the  antivivisectionists  should 
intellectualize  their  emotions  consists  in  their  neglected 
duty  to  be  just  to  the  laboratory-men.  Almost  every  line 
they  indite,  or  word  they  utter,  betrays  a  deep  vindictive- 
ness,  a  bitterness  of  suspicion  and  hatred,  that  is, — well, 
let  us  say  pitiable  !  But  what  is  the  truth  ?  Are  these 
men  seeking  selfish  aims  ?  Are  they  brutish  in  their  social 
or  family  life  ?  Are  they  liars  about  other  things  (than  this 
controversial  one)  ?  Is  the  medical  profession  the  most 
selfish,  or  in  truth  the  most  unselfish,  aye,  the  most  ludic- 
rously charitable,  of  all  the  professions  ?  Are  men  who 
devote  themselves  to  humanitarian,  impersonal,  and  scien- 
tific ends  in  other  callings  as  well  as  in  this,  likely  to  be 
fiendish  and  cruel  ?  I  frankly  admit  that  some  vivisection- 
ists  are  selfish,  scheming,  despicable  fellows — but  are  they 
all  so  ?  Are  not  some  of  the  antis  also  baddish  folk  ?  Is 
it  truthful  or  judicial  to  condemn  all  men  of  a  party  or 
class  ?  To  your  shame  we  ask,  Who  carry  on,  payless,  the 
terrible  labors  of  the  hospitals  of  the  world  ?  Who  have 
reduced  the  death-rate  of  your  civilization,  and  increased 
the  average  length  of  human  life  by  some  years  ?  In  whose 
hands  to-day  is  lodged  the  hope  of  ultimate  freedom  from 


"VIVISECTION."  21 

disease,  and  its  thousand  resultant  ills  ?  Who  or  what 
class  of  men  in  all  the  weary  world  is  bending  its  heroic 
endeavors  so  zealously  and  so  fearlessly  to  lessening  the 
world's  miseries  ?  Who  in  fact  and  finally  is  doing  as 
much  to  lessen  disease  and  suffering  in  the  animals  you 
blindly  love,  as  these  same  physicians  who  know  as  you  do 
not  know,  that  disease  in  animal  and  man  is  the  same  ? 
To  your  everlasting  shame  it  is  that  you  hate  and  oppose 
them  instead  of  aiding  them.  Love  your  lovable  animals 
wisely,  not  childishly,  love  them  more,  and  you  will  work 
with  us  and  not  against  us !  If  you  can't  enlarge  your  in- 
tellect, at  least  enlarge  your  heart,  and  learn  of  vivisection- 
ists  how  to  make  your  animals  healthy !  Who  "  crop " 
your  dog's  ears  and  "  worm  "  his  tail,  and  "  cadoganize," 
bit,  and  blinker,  your  horses  ?  Is  it  the  laboratory-man  ? 
Ah  no  !  It  is  Fashion,  which  you  are  all  too  careful  not  to 
antagonize,  and  which  delights  to  do  its  charity  very  vica- 
riously ! 

All  of  which  leads  to  a  linked  corollary, — the  question 
whether,  by  pushing  a  truth  to  its  most  reckless  extreme, 
you  are  not  allying  yourself  with  the  forces  that  are  antago- 
nistic to  civilization  ?  I  have  admitted  that  the  unity  of  all 
life,  and  by  implication  the  care  by  human  intelligence  of 
all  lower  life,  is  a  fundamental  principle  that  must  hence- 
forth guide  all  true  biologic  progress.  I  have  admitted 
that  yours  is  the  great  honor  of  having,  at  least  in  part, 
recognized  this,  and  of  having  set  yourselves  to  its  practi- 
cal realization.  But  the  criticism  has  swiftly  and  neces- 
sarily followed,  that  you  have  taken  your  duty  too  narrowly. 
To  love  one  dog  or  one  horse,  to  the  exclusion  or  to  the 
indifference  of  all  other  dogs  and  horses ;  to  love  animals 
rather  than  the  animal  kingdom,  and  to  love  the  animal 
kingdom  rather  than  humanity, — what  shall  we  call  this 
but  childishness  ? 

Or  is  it  something  else  not  so  innocent  as  childishness  ? 


22  "  VIVISECTION." 

Have  you  ever  calmly  asked  yourself  how  much  of 
the  antivivisection-cry  is  but  the  concealed  expression  of 
Science-hatred?  I  am  not  quite  sure  but  that  the  "cry" 
is  often  the  masked  growl  of  defeated  bigotry  and  super- 
stition filled  with  hereditary  hatred  of  clear-eyed  and  con- 
quering Science,  swiftly  marching  from  victory  to  victory 
and  ejecting  from  the  last  hiding-places  of  obstinate  and 
backward-looking  minds  their  beloved  errors,  their  cher- 
ished ignorances,  and  their  pleasant  selfishnesses.  With- 
out some  such  an  explanation,  it  is  otherwise  •diflficult  to 
account  for  the  bitterness,  the  misrepresentation,  the  amaz- 
ing celerity  with  which  any  club  is  grabbed,  and  the  blind 
fury  with  which  it  is  wielded.  A  too  passionate  partizan- 
ship  argues  the  existence  of  unconfessed  motives.  If  pure 
pity  of  suffering  animals  were  the  sole  sentiment  inspiring 
some  of  these  pamphlets,  it  could  hardly  be  so  unmindful 
of  the  awful  suffering  endured  elsewhere  than  in  labora- 
tories. But  this  is  an  unpleasant  and  gruesome  aspect; 
let  us  pass  on  to  consider  the  other  side  of  the  question. 

The  Truth  and  Strength  of  the  Vivisectionist  Cause, 
as  all  scientific  men  know,  lies  in  the  application  of  induc- 
tive methods  of  research  to  the  solution  of  the  mysteries 
of  normal  and  morbid  physiology.  To  those  who  are 
untroubled  by  these  mysteries,  to  those  careless  of  the 
awful  burden  of  disease,  its  expense  to  biologic  evolution 
and  civilization,  to  those  also  who  are  either  ignorant  of  or 
opposed  to  the  inductive  method  of  research,  to  all  such, 
of  course,  all  experimental  investigation  is  valueless.  But 
every  mind  which  has  once  realized  the  tremendous  im- 
portance of  science  to  humanity,  recognizes  with  ever- 
growing gladness,  the  profound  usefulness  of  induction  in 
bringing  light  into  the  intolerable  mystery  of  our  life  here. 
Induction,  as  we  all  know,  is  reasoning  from  facts  to  prin- 
ciples and  laws.  For  thousands  of  years  the  sense  of  the 
mystery  surrounding  us,  in  us,  and  of  us,  has  with  the  com- 


"VIVISECTION."  23 

mon  people  found  satisfaction  in  faith  or  religion,  which, 
scientifically  speaking,  is  often  the  voice  of  despair,  and  is 
always  the  cry  of  renunciation  of  intellectual  solution.  Dur- 
ing the  same  cycles  the  educated  or  more  original  minds 
sought  the  solution  of  the  mystery  of  being  in  deduction, 
i.  e.,  metaphysics  and  speculation.  They  never  looked  in- 
quiringly at  the  causes  and  realities  of  the  motions  of  the 
planets,  sun,  and  stars.  They  never  observed  the  stratified 
rocks  on  which  they  walked.  They  never  asked  the  cause 
of  glandular  action,  never  sought  the  origin  of  disease. 
The  awful  pageantry  of  the  biologic  process  swept  on  be- 
fore their  eyes  like  a  dream,  and  they  were  utterly  obliv- 
ious of  the  strange  mystery  of  themselves,  of  their  bodies, 
instincts,  sensations,  and  minds.  They  spent  their  lives 
in  vain  quibbles  as  to  matter,  mind,  free-will,  God,  angels, 
nominalism,  realism, — in  everlasting  delving  and  in  dis- 
cussion about  things  in  the  abstract.  Finally,  one  man 
after  another  appeared  who  said:  Let  us  for  once  observe 
things  in  the  concrete,  let  us  observe  facts  closely  and 
accurately  and  by  linked  logic  proceed  from  single  facts  to 
groups,  and  to  ever-inclusive  groupings  and  classifications, 
until  finally  in  this  way  law  gleamed  upon  the  eyes  of 
mankind,  order  arose  out  of  chaos,  and  with  her  splendid 
certainties  and  clearness  was  born  Modern  Science ! 
Almost  any  single  page  of  a  recent  text-book  on  chemistry, 
physiology,  or  therapeutics,  is  worth  to  humanity  the  entire 
inclusive  product  of  metaphysics,  and  theology,  and  philo- 
sophy, from  Plato  to  Hegel. 

It  will,  I  think,  appear,  that  I  am  by  no  means  blind  to 
the  errors  and  hypertrophies  and  limitations  of  the  method 
of  induction,  but  in  the  minds  of  all  awakened  men,  that  it 
is  the  most  potent  instrument  in  the  discovery  of  truth, 
there  is  no  sort  of  doubt  whatever.  Now  so  far  as  physi- 
ology and  medicine  are  concerned,  the  inductive  method 
based  in  part  on  vivisection  is  one  of  the  more, — mind  I  do 


24  "VIVISECTION." 

not  even  say  the  most — but  one  of  the  more  important  con- 
ditions of  scientific  accuracy  and  progress.  Reasoning 
from  facts  is  impossible  until  the  facts  are  known,  and  in 
the  exceptional  diflficulty  of  learning  the  facts  of  normal 
and  morbid  bodily  function,  vivisection  constitutes  an  im- 
portant method  of  procedure.  There  is  no  blinking  this 
truth,  and  the  opponents  of  justifiable  or  proper  vivisection 
must  either  acknowledge  it  or  else  take  their  places  as 
opponents  of  science  and  of  humanitarian  progress.  Every 
person  who  without  prejudice  has  looked  into  the  matter 
must  well  know  that  without  vivisection  a  large  part  of  the 
great  body  of  physiologic  and  therapeutic  truth  of  which 
we  are  now  in  possession  would  not  have  existed,  the  death- 
rate  would  have  been  far  higher  than  it  now  is,  and  our 
civilization  would  not  have  been  nearly  so  far  advanced  as 
it  is.  It  is  useless  for  me  to  catalogue  the  facts  upon  which 
this  assertion  rests.  They  who  deny  either  the  assertion 
or  the  facts  do  not  know  whereof  they  speak,  or  they  do 
not  wish  to  know. 

Just  here,  parenthetically,  is  suggested  a  strong  con- 
demnatory criticism  of  the  prohibitional  antivivisectionist, 
— a  criticism  that  shows  him  (or  her !)  to  be  de  facto,  a  de- 
ductionist,  and  not  an  inductionist.  Not  one  of  them  has 
ever  spent  ten  hours  in  a  laboratory,  not  one  has  made  a 
scientific  discovery.  In  other  words,  he  (or  she)  has 
opinions  of  a  very  pronounced  sort,  about  matters  without 
inquiry  and  study  and  without  first-hand  observation  of  the 
facts.  Like  the  Scotch  judge,  having  heard  one  side,  he 
has  made  up  his  mind,  and  does  not  wish  to  become  pre- 
judiced by  hearing  the  defendant's  attorney.  No  more  con- 
vincing proof  is  necessary  of  the  vice  of  deductive  reason- 
ing! 

I  could  enumerate  a  number  of  othev  facts  to  the  credit 
of  the  experimental  school  of  medicine,  but  the  single  one 
mentioned  is  sufficient  to  place  it  infallibly  upon  the  right 


"  VIVISECTION."  25 

side  in  humanity's  long  warfare  against  ignorance  and  dis- 
ease. It  will  be  more  instructive  therefore  if  we  proceed 
at  once  to  note : — 

The  Limitations  and  Errors  of  the  Vivisectionists. — 
The  first  that  strikes  one  is  an  exaggeration  of  the  impor- 
tance and  extent  of  the  vivisection-method.  As  valuable 
an  aid  as  it  is,  it  is  not  the  only,  and  perhaps  it  is  not  the 
chief  method  of  ascertaining  medical  truth.  It  has  with- 
out doubt,  often  been  used  when  other  methods  would 
have  been  productive  of  more  certain  results.  This  has 
arisen  from  what  a  large  and  broad  culture  of  the  human 
mind  perceives  to  flow  from  a  recent  and  rather  silly  hyper- 
trophy of  the  scientific  method,  and  a  limitation  of  that 
method  to  altogether  too  material  or  physical  aspects  of 
the  problem.  It  may  be  true  that  so  far  as  we  see  every 
mental  or  biologic  fact  has  its  material  counterpart.  More 
than  this  may  be  admitted :  It  is  the  especial  province  of 
Science,  to  make  sure  of  this  physical  aspect.  But  over 
against  these  admissions  must  be  placed  the  unscientific 
bigotry,  the  unwarrantable  dogmatism  of  the  prejudice, — 
nay  of  the  untruth,  that  the  life  or  psyche  is  wholly  and  ab- 
solutely explainable  in  terms  of  matter  and  mechanics.* 
Truly  scientific  men  have  not  been  guilty  of  this  wretched 
travesty  of  truth,  but  certain  plebificators  of  science  who 

*  An  Argument  for  Human  Vivisection. — A  writer  in  a  Western  journal 
makes  a  vigorous  plea  that  criminals  condemned  to  death  should  be  first  used 
for  vivisection  purposes,  and  especially  in  the  study  of  cerebral  localization 
and  function.  One  argument  adduced  is  exquisitely  humorous,  the  humor  be- 
ing heightened  by  the  innocent  unconsciousness  of  the  quality.  The  earnest 
writer  thus  argues  : — 

"  Those  who  would  be  unfavorably  impressed  with  this  method  of  investiga- 
tion should  take  kindly  to  the  information  that  experiments  of  this  kind  on  the 
brain  are  no  more  unpleasant  to  the  subject  than  like  impressions  aroused  dur- 
ing the  sojourn  of  perfect  liberty.  There  is  every  reason  to  believe  that  the 
stimulus  in  a  large  number  of  instances  would  be  highly  pleasing.  If,  for  ex- 
ample, our  subject  experimented  upon  was  a  person  who  had  been  repeatedly 
animated  by  the  ludicrous,  upon  touching  the  seat  of  such  impressions  the 

3 


26  '« VIVISECTION." 

have  caught  the  public  ear  have  harped  upon  it  until  they 
have  almost  made  the  judge  of  us  all — enlightened  public 
opinion — believe  this  is  the  genuine  attitude  of  Science. 
It  is  a  fatuous  and  a  bitter  error,  and  the  best  scientific  minds, 
having  suffered  by  the  misrepresentation  are  making  haste 
to  disallow  the  impertinents,  and  to  set  the  world  right  as 
to  the  true  status  of  the  matter.  It  has  been  the  habit  of 
some  to  sneer  at  the  so-called  "  vitalists,"  asserting  with 
reckless  derision  that  thought  is  a  secretion  of  the  brain, 
and  life  a  property  of  matter.  Except  from  a  few  we  have 
probably  heard  the  last  of  such  teaching.  It  may  be  a 
truth,  but  until  it  is  so  proved  scientific  minds  will  not 
assert  it.  So  long  as  spontaneous  generation  is  a  foolish 
untruth,  so  long  as  omne  viviim  ex  vivo  is  disproved  by  no 
single  fact  in  the  world,  so  long  must  the  ranters  and 
dogmatists  at  least  keep  silence  in  the  presence  of  logical 
and  educated  minds. 

But,  as  I  have  said,  the  influence  of  the  dogmatists  has 
been  too  much  in  evidence  in  science  and  especially  in 
vivisection-practice.  "  It  is,"  says  Professor  Mosso,  the 
biographer  of  the  great  Ludwig,  "an  error,  to  believe  that 
experiments  can  be  performed  upon  an  animal  that  feels. 
The  perturbation  induced  by  pain  in  the  functions  of  the 
organism  is  so  profound  as  to  render  useless  the  experi- 
menter's study.  It  was  Ludwig  who  uttered  the  celebrated 
mot,  that  some  physiologists,  to  study  the  nervous  system 


whole  circumstance  would  be  reproduced,  attended  with  the  same  vivacity  as 
the  original  experience.  Painful  sensations  would  not  be  reproduced  unless  a 
certain  nucleus  of  cells  was  stimulated,  and  this  could  be  avoided  after  its  exact 
location  was  ascertained.  To  secure  cooperation  and  carry  out  the  operation 
successfully  the  condemned  would  be  instructed  with  the  nature  of  the  work." 

The  childlike  conviction  that  "  the  ludicrous  "  and  that  "  pain"  have  de- 
finitely localizable  centers,  and  that  all  one  would  have  to  do  in  order  to  spend 
a  life  in  laughter  would  be  to  tickle  the  ludicrous-center  with  a  galvanic  needle, 
is  itself  one  of  the  most  painfully  ludicrous  conceptions  of  pseudo-science  that 
we  have  ever  met. — Med.  News,  December  i6,  i8gj. 


"  VIVISECTION."  27 

act  like  one  who  fires  a  pistol  into  a  watch  to  see  how  the 
chronometer  works.  Suffering  should  be  entirely  elimin- 
ated from  physiologic  experiment,  because  the  instruments 
we  employ  to-day  are  so  delicate  that  they  become  inser- 
vicable  the  moment  the  animal  is  agitated  or  moves." 

This  admirable  quotation  perhaps  leaves  out  of  the  count 
certain  experiments  that  require  more  or  less  long-contin- 
ued suffering,  and  in  which  anesthesia  would  be  impossible, 
but  in  the  main  it  is  a  truth  that  has  been  too  much  ne- 
glected on  the  part  of  vivisectors. 

I  need  not  weary  you  with  other  similar  errors,  but  pass 
to  another  exaggeration,  the  over-emphasis  of  vivisection- 
experiment  and  the  neglect  of  clinical  and  pathologic  re- 
sults. The  pathologic  fact  is  a  vivisection-experiment  of 
the  very  best  kind  and  admirably  conducted  by  nature. 
We  should  trust  it  whenever  possible,  and  not  only  the  far 
more  bunglesome  and  uncertain  one  of  artifice.  Among 
very  many  examples  that  might  be  cited,  I  shall  give  but 
one.  Dr.  Seguin,  of  New  York,  it  will  hardly  be  disputed, 
is  a  competent  judge  in  the  matter  alluded  to  in  the  follow- 
ing quotation : — 

"  Horsley  appears  to  assume  that  our  progress  in  cerebral  lo- 
calization has  been  mainly  dependent  upon  experimentation. 
Here  again  we  must  differ  from  him.  Clinical  observation  and 
pathologic  data  come  first  (Broca  for  speech-center,  Hughlings- 
Jackson  for  a  hand-center  and  general  doctrine),  the  animal 
experiments  with  detailed  proofs  by  Hitzig,  Ferrier,  and  others 
long  after ;  .and  the  solid  facts  upon  which  we  make  our  daily 
localization  diagnoses  have  been  patiently  accumulated  by 
pathologists,  and  would  stand  to-day  supporting  the  doctrine  of 
cerebral  localization  if  not  one  animal's  brain  had  been  touched. 
Besides,  in  the  case  of  the  visual  half-center,  human  pathologic 
facts  have  overthrown  the  result  of  experimentation  (Ferrier's 
angular  gyrus  center),  and  have  made  us,  for  practical  purposes, 
indifferent  to  the  contradictory  results  of  Munk  and  Goltz.     It 


28  "  VIVISECTION." 

is  safe  to  say  that  every  one  of  the  so-called  *  centers '  in  the 
human  brain  have  been  determined  empirically  by  postmortem 
proofs,  independently  of  experimental  data.  What  animal  ex- 
periments would  have  led  us,  for  example,  to  locate  the  half- 
center  for  ordinary  vision  in  the  cuneus,  the  center  for  the  leg  in 
the  paracentral  lobule,  and  that  for  audited  language  in  the  left 
first  temporal  gyrus?  In  this  department  of  pathology  medical 
science  has  been  strictly  inductive  and  sufficient  unto  itself, 
though  receiving  confirmatory  evidence  from  the  physiologist. 
The  first  (speech)  and  the  last  (visual)  centers  have  been  discov- 
ered by  clinical  and  pathologic  studies.* 

Almost  every  point  over  which  the  controversy  has  raged 
most  fiercely  has  been  in  relation  to  one  or  all  of  the  three 
or  four  questions : — 

1.  What  is  a  vivisection  experiment? 

2.  By  whom  should  it  be  performed  ? 


*  That  this  is  not  a  solitary  opinion  may  be  gathered  from  the  following 
(unverified)  quotations  I  have  found.  I  do  not  assent  to  them  either  as  true 
or  complete  statements  of  the  facts,  and  especially  of  later  and  properly-con- 
ducted experimentation.  I  quote  only  to  show  that  there  are  two  sides  to  the 
question,  and  the  doubtful  valae  of  improperly-chosen  or  improperly-conducted 
experimentation : — 

"  In  surgery  I  am  not  aware  of  any  of  these  experiments  on  the  lower  ani- 
mals having  led  to  the  mitigation  of  pain  or  to  improvement  as  regards  surgical 
details." — [Sit  William  Fergusson.) 

"  No  single  operation  in  surgery  has  been  initiated  by  the  performance  of 
something  hke  it  on  the  lower  animals." — (Sir  William  Fergusson.) 

"  All  systems  based  on  vivisection  are  false  and  '  illusory.'  " — (N61aton.) 

"  Vivisection  has  done  more  to  perpetuate  error  than  to  enforce  the  just 
views  taken  from  anatomy  and  the  natural  sciences." — (Sir  Charles  Bell.) 

"  Vivisection  has  not  only  not  helped  the  surgeon  one  bit,  but  has  often  led 
him  astray." — (Lawson  Tait.) 

"  The  teachings  of  vivisection  on  the  functions  of  the  brain  are  a  tissue  of 
error,  and  can  only  be  corrected  by  clinical  observations." — (Brown-S6quard.) 

"  Confusion  is  the  scourge  of  science,  and  it  is  the  most  striking  result  of 
vivisection." — (Sir  Charles  Bell.) 

Majendie  said  "  No  physician  would  think  of  calling  to  his  bedside  a  doctor 
who  derived  his  knowledge  from  a  source  so  liable  to  error  as  vivisection." 


"VIVISECTION."  ig 

3.  For  what  purpose  should  it  be  performed  ? 

4.  By  what  method  should  it  be  carried  out  ? 

In  reference  to  all  of  these  questions,  scientific  men 
should  unite  and  establish  a  common  set  of  principles  or 
answers.  In  my  judgment  their  failure  to  do  so  at  all,  and 
besides  this,  their  frequent  exaggeration  of  logical  limits 
and  just  claims,  has  been  one  of  the  unfortunate  causes  of 
useless  and  wasteful  wrangling. 

1.  They  have  not  taught  their  opponents  or  the  com- 
munity :  I.  What  a  vivisection-experiment  is  ;  2.  How  very 
little  of  such  experimentation  there  is  ;  3.  How  little  pain 
or  suffering  there  is  attendant  upon  properly  chosen  and 
properly  conducted  experimentation.  They  have,  for 
example,  allowed  the  roar  of  controversial  anger  to  go  un- 
rebuked  that  confuses  death  and  vivisection.  Dissection  of 
dead  animals  is  not  vivisection,  of  course,  and  at  that  one 
stroke  there  falls  to  the  ground  at  least  three-fourths  of  the 
present  antagonism  and  prejudice.  The  vast  majority  of 
all  animals  now  used  in  experimental  study  are  dead 
animals.  Again,  if  death  at  once  follow  experimentation 
that  has  been  painless,  another  large  cause  of  unjust  censure 
falls  pointless.  Once  more,  if  anesthesia  prevents  all  the 
pain  of  what  would  otherwise  be  painful  experiment,  sensi- 
ble people  cannot  object  to  that,  and  thus  another  large  ex- 
cision is  taken  from  the  few  remaining  cases.  As  we  all 
know,  but  little  painfulness  or  suffering  attends  the  vastly 
great  majority  of  so-called  vivisections.  When  experiment 
upon  a  dead  animal  is  meant  do  not  let  us  permit  the  word 
vivisection  to  be  used.  It  is  simply  dissection  or  mortisec- 
tion,  if  you  please.  If  butchers  are  not  to  be  prosecuted 
or  martyrized,  certainly  scientific  men  may  be  permitted  to 
carry  out  studies  upon  the  dead  animal.  For  the  rest,  why 
not  adopt  Professor  Wilder's  words  :  callisection  when  pain- 
less vivisection  is  meant,  and  sentisecfwn,  when  it  is  painful? 

2,  I  believe  scientific  men  have  made  a  grave  mistake  in 


36  "  VIVISECTION." 

opposing  the  limitation  of  vivisection  {not  mortisection) 
experimentation  to  those  fitted  by  education  and  position 
to  properly  choose,  and  properly  execute  such  experiments. 
No  harm  can  come,  and  I  believe  much  good  would  come 
from  our  perfect  readiness  to  accede  to,  nay,  to  advocate 
the  antivivisection  desire  to  limit  all  experimentation  to 
chartered  institutions,  or  to  such  private  investigators  as 
might  be  selected  by  a  properly  chosen  authority.  This 
limitation  of  course  should  be  conditioned  upon  the  ab- 
solute freedom  of  (comparatively)  painless  killing  by  who- 
ever may  please  to  kill,  or  else  the  hunters,  fishers, 
slaughter-house  men,  and  a  hundred  other  killers  of  bed- 
bugs, grasshoppers,  etc.,  would  have  to  be  included,  and 
then  the  world  would  roar  its  laughter !  Mayn't  we  vivi- 
sect tapeworms  and  pediculi? 

At  present  the  greatest  harm  is  done  true  science  by 
men  who  conduct  experiments  without  preliminary  know- 
ledge to  choose,  without  judgment  to  carry  out,  without 
true  scientific  training  or  method,  and  only  in  the  interest 
of  vanity.  It  takes  a  deal  of  true  science  and  patience  to 
neutralize  with  good  and  to  wash  out  of  the  memory  the 
sickening,  goading  sense  of  shame  that  follows  the  know- 
ledge that  in  the  name  of  science  a  man  could  from  a  height 
of  25  feet  drop  125  dogs  upon  the  nates  (the  spine  forming 
a  perpendicular  line  to  this  point),  and  for  from  41  to  100 
days  observe  the  results  until  slow  death  ended  the  animals' 
misery.  While  we  have  such  things  to  answer  for,  our 
withers  are  surely  not  unwrung,  and  in  the  interest  ot 
science,  if  not  from  other  motives,  we  have  a  right  to 
decide  who  shall  be  privileged  to  do  them. 

I  have  adduced  this  single  American  experiment,  but 
purposely  refrain  from  even  mentioning  the  horrors  of 
European  laboratories.  This  is  not  because  I  would  avoid 
putting  blame  where  it  belongs,  but  because  such  things  are 
peculiarly  prone  to  arouse  violent  language  and  passion. 


"VIVISECTION."  31 

clouding  the  intellect  and  making  almost  impossible  a  de- 
sirable judicial  attitude  of  mind.  The  Teutonic  race  is  to 
be  congratulated  that  it  is  guilty  of  at  least  but  few 
examples  of  the  atrocities  that  have  stained  the  history  of 
Latin  vivisection,  and  before  which,  as  before  the  records  of 
Roman  Conquest  and  Slavery,  or  of  the  "  Holy  Inquisi- 
tion," one  shudders  at  the  possibilities  of  mental  action,  in 
beings  that  bore  the  human  form  and  feature.  Shaler  con- 
tends that  it  was  the  domestication  of  animals  that  enabled 
the  Aryan  and  Teuton  to  conquer  his  adversary,  and  that 
has  since  civilized  the  conqueror.  Thus  long  friendship 
with  animals  has  given  us  a  freedom  from  guilt  that  is  fortu- 
nate for  Teutonic  peoples  and  science. 

Vivisection  is  out  of  place  in  the  public  schools.  In  the 
interests  of  pedagogy,  as  well  for  the  benefit  of  the  pupil's 
morality  as  for  the  promotion  of  true  science,  scientific  men 
should  oppose  with  a  common  voice  any  such  caricature 
and  subversion  of  their  aims  and  methods.  Children  should 
not,  of  all  things  in  the  world,  "  be  familiarized  with  the 
sight  of  blood,  etc.,  etc."  * 


*  Antivivisection  for  Children. — It  strikes  us  that  of  all  men  physicians 
should  be  foremost  and  most  emphatic  in  their  denunciation  of  vivisection  in 
the  public  schools  or  in  any  schools  except  those  for  adults  and  those  especially 
devoting  themselves  to  medical  or  biologic  science.  The  matter  would  hardly 
seem  to  need  argumentation.  Every  right-minded  person  must  know,  and  doubt- 
less must  painfully  remember  in  his  own  case,  how  callous  children  are  to  suffer- 
ing and  even  how  verily  diabolic  they  often  are  as  tormentors  of  animals  over 
which  they  have  power.  It  would  also  seem  perfectly  plain  that  the  practice  of 
vivisection  before  or  by  such  highly  imitative  beings  would  have  one  certain 
effect :  to  increase  enormously  the  already  thoughtlessly  or  consciously  cruel  ten- 
dencies of  their  natures.  **  Appetite  grows  by  eating."  In  medieval  times  the 
great  gala  days  were  the  days  ofauio  dafi.  Gay  cavaliers  and  gay  ladies  flirted 
and  laughed  for  hours  before  men  slowly  being  burned  to  death.  They  were 
no  more  intentionally  or  really  cruel  than  boys  to-day  who  pour  coal-oil  over 
dogs  and  burn  them  to  death. 

Would  vivisection  in  public  schools  have  other  effects  more  than  compensa- 
tory for  the  evil  ?     Clearly  and  decidedly  not.     In  the  first  place,  dissection 


ii  "VIVISECTION." 

3.  The  true  object,  the  principal  if  not  the  only  one,  of 
vivisection,  should  be  the  eliciting  of  new  truth.  To  this 
end  also,  any  one  may  sacrifice  by  painless  death  as  many 
animals  as  he  pleases,  so  long — a  most  remote  possibility — 
as  the  extermination  of  no  species  is  threatened.  Shall 
it  not  be  as  right  to  kill  rabbits  for  scientific  purposes, 
as  for  sport,  or  to  rid  the  harassed  Australian  farmer  of  the 
pests  ?  We  must  ever  insist  on  this  distinction  between 
use  of  the  dead  animal  and  true  vivisection.  One  may 
painlessly  kill  animals  also  in  order  by  further  experiment 
to  acquire  manipulative  or  surgical  skill,  and  for  didactic 
purposes,  in  medical  or  scientific  schools.  Death  of  plente- 
ous and  prolific  animals,  is  per  se  no  evil,  and  cannot  be 
legislated  against  or  morally  forbidden ;  and  the  same  rule 
will  hold  as  regards  all  callisection,  or  painless  vivisection. 
But  I  believe  that  the  most  enlightened  judgment  and  feel- 
ing of  the  world  will  not  justify  much  or  any  severe  senti- 
section  (painful  vivisection)  for  didactic  purposes  or  for  the 
acquirement  of  operative  technic.  In  the  interests  of 
science,  again,  as  well  as  of  morality,  scientific  men  should 
set  their  faces  sternly  against  such  things. 

and  anatomy  and  the  advanced  physiology  to  be  gained  by  vivisection  are  not 
fit  studies  for  the  child-mind,  but  are  plainly  adapted  and  adaptable  only  to  a 
maturer  age,  and  for  those  preparing  to  become  physicians  or  specialists.  The 
child-mind  by  its  very  nature  is  not  analytic,  and  any  attempt  to  force  it  into 
anlaytic  studies  before  a  riper  season,  is  squarely  contrary  to  pedagogic  science. 
It  is  not  only  against  the  child's  nature  and  bound  to  prove  unsuccessful,  but, 
if  possible,  it  would  not  be  desirable.  We  need  to  teach  the  young  mind  the 
beauty  of  life,  not  the  analysis  of  death.  In  educational  methods  we  are  at 
last  fairly  emerging  from  the  barbarism  of  the  study  of  dead  things  by  dead 
methods  and  by  dead-alive  teachers.  Do  not  let  us  encourage  any  such  rever- 
sion to  the  barbarism  of  medievalism,  as  turning  the  kindergarten,  that  divine 
promise  of  a  future  civilization,  into  a  miniature  dissection-room  or  laboratory 
for  experimental  physiology.  Moreover,  in  the  interests  of  physiology,  of 
medicine,  and  of  science  itself,  we  should  protest  against  such  physiology  as 
would  be  taught  in  the  public  schools  by  the  present  day  (or  promised)  school- 
teacher.— MeJ.  News,  Aidgust  77,  i8g^. 


"  VIVISECTION."  33 

4.  The  proper  method  of  using  animals  for  experimental 
purposes  should  combine  scientific  seriousness  and  rigor 
with  the  tenderest  kindness  to  the  animals.  There  is  a 
subtle  and  beautiful  law  of  psychology  that  only  the  unity 
of  right  object  and  careful  method  is  productive  of  good 
results.  Matter  and  manner  must  go  hand  in  hand.  Mor- 
ality is  a  part  of  intellect,  and  a  large  part.  When  you  see 
a  vivisector  pretending  to  be  scientific,  but  whose  every  act 
and  word  indicates  brutality  to  his  fellow  men,  the  politi- 
cian, the  selfish  schemer,  vulgarity  of  mind  and  banality 
of  manner,  rest  assured  his  laboratory-experiment  is 
vitiated  with  falsehood  and  error,  and  scientifically  is 
utterly  valueless.  To  jeer  at  and  deride  "  sentimentality  " 
while  pretending  to  be  working  for  the  good  of  humanity 
(a  sentiment,  if  ever  there  was  one !)  is  hypocritic  and 
flagrant  self-contradiction.  This  attitude  of  mind  on  the 
part  of  a  few  men  does  more  to  arouse  the  indignation  of 
opponents  than  any  cruelty  itself  Scientific  men  should 
root  out  of  their  ranks  such  poor  representatives.  They 
are  enemies  in  the  scientific  household.  Dr.  Klein,  a  phy- 
siologist, before  the  Royal  Commission  testified  that  he 
had  no  regard  at  all  for  the  sufferings  of  the  animals  he 
used,  and  never  used  anesthetics  except  for  didactic  pur- 
poses, unless  necessary  for  his  own  convenience,  and  that 
he  had  no  time  for  thinking  what  the  animal  would  feel  or 
suffer.  It  may  be  denied,  but  I  am  certain  a  few  American 
experimenters  feel  the  same  way  and  act  in  accordance  with 
their  feelings.  But  they  are  not  by  any  means  the  majority, 
and  they  must  not  only  be  silenced,  but  their  useless  and 
unscientific  work  should  be  stopped.  They  are  a  disgrace 
both  to  science  and  humanity.  Over  against  Klein  and 
those  of  his  way  of  feeling  let  us  set  the  example  of  the 
great  Ludwig,  he  who  has  done  more  for  physiology  than 
a  thousand  Kleins,  he  whose  influence  for  scientific  truth 
has  been  the  greatest  of  any  physiologist  in  Europe. 


34  "  VIVISECTION." 

"  No  physiologist,"  says  his  biographer,  "  has  ever 
sought  with  greater  frankness  than  Ludwig  to  impose  just 
limits  on  vivisection.  The  gates  of  his  institute  were  ever 
open  to  all  who  wished  to  assure  themselves  that  he,  in 
the  midst  of  his  experiments,  knew  how  to  spare  suffering. 
The  vivisector's  art  attained  such  perfection  in  his  hands 
that,  having  to  sacrifice  an  animal,  he  did  not  let  it  feel 
that  it  was  even  being  tied.  He  would  apply  the  muzzle 
and  instantly  proceed  to  the  exhibition  of  ether  or  chloro- 
form, which,  in  a  few  seconds,  in  a  dog,  for  example,  made 
it  insensible." 

In  America  we  have  one  great  anatomist  the  circles  of 
whose  scientific  beneficence  are  ever  widening  and  deepen- 
ing, who  acts  as  did  Ludwig,  No  man  ever  had  a  more 
sympathetic  and  tender  regard  for  all  lower  life  than  he. 
His  cat-home  is  a  marvel  of  ingenuity  and  kind  carefulness, 
over  which  hangs  the  motto — 

"  Snugly  housed  and  fully  fed, 
Happy  living  and  useful  dead." 

By  this  man  not  a  single  painful  experiment  is  found 
necessary  to  illustrate  his  physiologic  teachings,  although 
some  five  hundred  or  more  animals  are  annually  killed 
with  perfect  painlessness.  His  laboratories  and  homes  of 
animals  are  always  open  to  inspection,  gladly,  proudly 
exhibited,  and  if  you  want  a  pet  he  will  give  you  your 
choice  out  of  an  extensive  collection. 

And  this  brings  me  to  what  I  can  but  conceive  as  a 
grave  and  profound  mistake  on  the  part  of  the  experi- 
mentalists,— their  secrecy.  I  well  know  that  bigotry  and 
prejudice  may  misrepresent.  The  whole  history  of  the 
cycle-long  struggle  of  the  medical  profession  to  obtain 
human  dissection-material  in  the  study  of  anatomy  shows 
that  the  public  mind  has  been  hard  to  win  over  from  its 
repugnance  to  the  use  of  the  dead  human  body  for  educa- 


« VIVISECTION."  35 

tion  in  anatomy.  But  that  day  is  now  nearly  or  quite  past, 
and  the  policy  of  secrecy  is  to  be  replaced  by  one  of  the 
most  complete  frankness  and  openness.  In  his  recent 
presidential  address,  Dr.  Thomas  Dwight  of  the  Harvard 
Medical  School  said  : — 

"  From  careful  observation  I  am  convinced  that  the  policy 
which  will  lead  to  the  most  satisfactory  results  is  one  of  complete 
openness ;  that  above  all,  we  should  avoid  a  timidity  which  shirks 
discussion  of  this  topic.  When  we  shall  show  so  clearly  as  to 
carry  conviction,  that  we  have  nothing  to  conceal,  a  great  step 
will  have  been  taken.  I  like  to  boast  that  the  anatomical  depart- 
ment of  the  Harvard  Medical  School  is  ready  to  give  an  account 
of  every  body  it  receives.  If  there  be  aught  in  the  management 
of  dissecting  rooms  that  calls  for  criticism,  I  would  not  have  re- 
form forced  upon  us  from  without.  Let  us  be  the  first  to  antici- 
pate every  reasonable  demand." 

It  is  precisely  in  this  spirit  that  the  experimental  school 
of  medicine  should  meet  the  antivivisectionists  and  the 
world.  A  truly  scientific  man  is  necessarily  a  humane 
man,  and  there  will  be  nothing  to  conceal  from  the  public 
gaze  of  anything  that  goes  on  in  his  laboratory.  It  is  a 
mistake  to  think  our  work  cannot  bear  the  criticism  of  such 
enlightened  public  sentiment  as  exists  here  and  now ;  if 
there  is  necessary  secrecy  there  is  wrong.  People  gener- 
ally are  not  such  poor  judges  as  all  that.  The  openness 
will  at  one  stroke  eliminate  the  pseudoscientists  and 
greatly  calm  the  overwrought  and  erroneous  public  appre- 
hension. I  would  even  go  further:  Every  laboratory 
should  publish  an  annual  statement  setting  forth  plainly  the 
number  and  kind  of  experiments,  the  objects  aimed  at,  and 
most  definitely  the  methods  of  conducting  them.  At 
present  the  public  somewhat  ludicrously  but  sincerely 
enough  grossly  exaggerates  the  amount  and  the  char- 
acter of  this  work,  and  by  our  foolish  secrecy  we  feed 
the  flame  of  their  passionate  error.     An  organized  syste- 


36  '•  VIVISECTION." 

matic  and  absolute  frankness,  besides  self-benefit,  would  at 
once,  as  it  were,  take  the  wind  out  of  our  opponents'  sails. 
Do  not  also  let  us  have  "  reform  forced  upon  us  from  with- 
out," in  this  contention,  but  by  going  more  than  half  way 
to  meet  them,  by  the  sincerest  publicity,  show  that  as  well 
as  scientists  and  lovers  of  men  we  are  also  genuine  lovers 
of  animals.  Faith,  hope,  and  love, — these  three  !  To  faith 
in  knowledge,  to  hope  of  lessening  human  evil,  we  add 
love — love  of  men,  and  of  the  beautiful  living  mechanisnw 
of  animal-bodies  placed  in  our  care.  He  who  unnecessarily 
hurts  one  of  these,  is  a  disgrace  to  science  and  to  humanity. 
As  it  appears  to  me  this  most  unfortunate  controversy, 
filled  with  bitterness,  misrepresentation,  and  exaggeration, 
is  utterly  unnecessary.  Both  of  the  sharply-divided  hate- 
filled  parties  are  at  heart,  if  they  but  knew  it,  agreed  upon 
essentials,  and  furiously  warring  over  nonessentials  and 
errors.  I  frankly  confess  that  one  side  is  about  as  much 
at  fault  as  the  other,  and  that  the  whole  wretched  business 
is  a  sad  commentary  upon  the  poverty  of  common  charity 
and  good  sense.  There  have  been  far  more  passion,  shriek- 
ing, grunting,  and  growling  than  becomes  rational  beings. 
The  only  comforting  thing  in  it  all  is  the  righteous  convic- 
tion of  everybody  concerned  that  at  heart  it  is  an  awfully 
serious  and  important  concern.  But  this  hardly  justifies 
either  hysteric  falsetto  or  leonine  roaring.  When  good 
women  call  good  men  devils,  and  good  men  retort  Liars  ! 
— it  commences  to  get  disgusting  or  ludicrously  opera 
bouffe.  Cannot  we  ignore  the  ranters  and  extremists  of 
both  parties,  behave  like  decent  folk,  get  together,  strike  a 
balance  sheet  of  our  common  follies  and  common  excellen- 
cies, and  find  that  at  last  we  are  very  much  alike,  and  in- 
deed, have  no  real  quarrel  ?  Of  course  scientists  can  have 
nothing  to  do  with  those  who  cry  no  quarter !  But  the 
advocate  of  the  total  prohibition  of  vivisection  can  be 
brought  to  see  the  error  of  his  (or  her)  ways,  or  can  be 


"  VIVISECTION."  37 

cheerfully  allowed  to  go  those  ways  with  the  amused  pity 
of  all  sensible  people.  For  the  rest  there  is  by  no  means 
an  infinite  and  unbridgeable  chasm  separating  the  two 
parties.  Every  good  scientist  is  as  much  interested  in  pro- 
moting kindness  to  animals  as  the  most  devoted  member 
of  S.  P.  C.  A.,  and  I  would  add  that  it  is  his  duty  to  join 
such  organizations  and  help  to  carry  on  their  proper  work. 
Possibly  he  may  serve  to  intellectualize  that  work  some- 
what and  make  it  more  effective.  Pardon  me  for  again  allud- 
ing to  Ludwig,  the  great  scientist,  the  greatest  of  vivisectors, 
and  one  of  the  greatest  lovers  of  animals.  It  will  doubt- 
less surprise  some  extremists  to  be  told  that  a  vivisector 
can  be  as  great  a  protector  of  animals  from  cruelty  as  the 
best  of  them,  and  the  sting  of  the  surprise  and  incredulity 
comes  from  the  sad  confession  that  it  is  much  of  it  our 
own  fault.  But  "  Ludwig  was  President  of  the  Leipsic 
Society  for  the  Protection  of  Animals,  and  remained  to 
the  last  one  of  its  most  active  members.  Germany  owes 
it  to  him  that  her  horses  and  beasts  of  burden  are  now 
humanely  treated.  To  him  is  due  that  awakening  of  the 
true  humanitarian  spirit  toward  the  brute  creation  that  cul- 
minated in  the  '  Verband  der  Thierschutz-vereine  des 
Deutschen  Reichs '  (Union  of  German  Societies  for  the 
Protection  of  Animals).  It  was  mainly  from  her  sense  of 
the  gentler  attitude  to  be  encouraged  toward  animals  on 
the  part  of  the  rising  generation  that  Leipsic  made  him  an 
honorary  citizen  on  the  fiftieth  anniversary  of  his  gradua- 
tion in  medicine."  Can  we  not,  shall  we  not,  rise  to  the 
easily- attained  height  of  a  similar  dignity  and  magnanimity? 
Let  us  have  peace  ! 

Perhaps  it  may  not  be  possible  to  unite  the  two  parties 
in  a  common  cause.  The  earlier  sins  and  mistakes  of  a 
good  man  are  likely  to  cling  to  him  like  a  Nessus-shirt, 
and  bar  his  later  progress.  Most  men  would  rather  be 
consistent  than  to  be  right.    If  it  is  really  impossible  to  get 


o-a 


^]l.i73 


38  "  VIVISECTION." 

the  experimentalists  and  the  antivivisectionists  to  cancel 
their  mutual  errors  and  exaggerations — the  things  wherein 
they  disagree — and  unite  in  a  common  propagandism  of 
their  mutual  truths  and  beliefs, — if  this  desirable  and  right 
ideal  is  impossible,  then  it  is  time  to  form  a  new  order  or 
society  aiming  to  correct  the  errors  of  both  parties,  gen- 
eralize and  systematize  the  essential  purposes  of  both,  and 
— more  important  still — to  extend  its  field  of  labor  beyond 
the  present  narrow  confines  and  limited  range. 

I  wish  there  might  be  an  International  Biologic  League 
formed  for  the  general  protection  and  safeguarding  of 
animals  and  plants  from  cruelty  and  destruction.  Human 
progress  and  civilization  have  united  at  last  to  put  into  our 
hands  the  care  and  destiny  of  all  lower  forms  of  life  upon 
the  globe.  The  ingenuity,  prolificity,  and  restlessness  of 
humanity  have  at  last  brought  man  into  destructive  con- 
tact with  every  order  of  lower  life,  and  with  a  more  than 
savage  stupidity  he  has  begun  a  suicidal  and  impious  ex- 
termination of  many  types.  Once  gone  these  are  forever 
gone,  and  a  large  culture  can  only  feel  genuine  anguish  at 
such  a  terrible  end  as  seems  threatened.  It  is  time  some 
such  organization  of  biologists  should  undertake  to  extend 
the  egis  of  human  care  over  the  fate  of  our  cosmic  life, 
and  secure  from  all  governments  such  laws  as  shall  pre- 
vent the  ruinous  destruction  of  infinitely  beautiful  and 
valuable  types.  Already  many  species  of  birds  have  dis- 
appeared in  historic  times,  and  our  barbaric  milliners  and 
their  thoughtless  customers  are  still  furiously  at  their 
frightful  work.  One  dealer  last  year  sold  2,000,000  bird- 
skins.  The  world's  most  wonderful  and  intelligent  animal, 
the  elephant,  is  doomed,  100,000  a  year  being  slaughtered 
to  provide  billiard  balls,  every  pound  of  ivory  costing  also  a 
human  life.  Our  buffaloes  and  moose  are  about  gone,  and 
the  seals  are  soon  to  go,  with  many  wonderful  inhabitants 
of  the  earth's  waters.  Future  scientists  will  look  back  at  us 


"  VIVISECTION."  39 

of  to-day  aghast  at  our  blindness  and  heedlessness.  Some 
gleams  and  hints  of  prudence  exist,  as  for  example,  the 
forbidding  of  hunting  in  our  national  parks,  our  Govern- 
ment Fish  Commission,  etc.,  but  how  far  is  all  this  from 
a  generalized  and  international  system,  that  should  prepare 
universal  laws  and  plans  for  biologic  Retreats  or  Sanctu- 
aries, that  should  protect  the  head-waters  of  our  rivers 
from  deforestation,  and  prevent  them  from  being  made 
foul  sewers,  that  should  guard  against  upsetting  the  deli- 
cate balance  between  animal  and  vegetable  life,  immin- 
ently threatened  by  the  thoughtlessness,  brutality,  and 
avarice  of  destructive  man.  Before  such  an  ideal  how  con- 
temptibly petty  seem  the  unseemly  bickerings  of  the 
whole  vivisection  controversy ! 


CONCERNING  MEDICAL  LANGUAGE.* 

One  of  the  most  amusing  inconsistencies  of  a  small  class 
of  minds  otherwise  progressive,  scientific  and  rational,  is 
their  unreasoning  conservatism  concerning  the  spelling  and 
use  of  certain  words.  In  any  other  subject,  for  instance 
therapeutics  or  surgery,  they  will  welcome  investigation,  and 
further  it,  admitting  the  duty  of  improving  upon  the  old, 
and  of  pushing  on  toward  a  more  simple  and  perfect 
science.  But  when  you  suggest  that  language,  the  tool  of 
thought,  deserves  consideration,  is  very  clumsy  and  archaic, 
is  capable  of  being  improved, — at  once  they  shrink  and  are 
shocked  at  your  temerity. 

This  attitude  of  hatred  of  innovation  in  one  single  field 
of  human  activity,  while  admitting  the  law  of  progress  in 
all  other  departments,  is  also  coupled  with  a  second  incon- 
sistency; a  dogmatism  of  conviction  that  the  change  or 
modification  of  language  urged  is  barbarous,  almost 
sacrilegious,  that  you  are  a  sort  of  ill-bred  upstart  and 
ignoramus  in  advocating  it,  and  that  the  old  form  you 
desire  to  supplant  is  the  correct  one,  while  your  new- 
fangled thing  is  absurd  and  is  born  of  ignorance.  The 
bigotry  of  the  average  Englishman  in  these  matters  is  a 
charming  exhibition  of  medieval-mindedness  translated  to 
an  age  of  civilization  and  progress.  He  actually  thinks 
that  the  spelling-reformer,  however  infinitesimal  and  micro- 
scopic the  spelling-change  advocated,  is  the  product  of 
"  Americanism,"  and  of  American  ignorance  of  how  to 

*  Delivered  at  the  Meeting  of  the  American  Medical  Editors'  Association, 
held  at  Atlanta,  May,  1896. 

40 


CONCERNING  MEDICAL  LANGUAGE.  41 

spell.  The  American  inheritor  of  the  English  dogmatism 
tries  to  hide  his  feeling,  shrinks  from  such  laughable 
exposure  of  his  own  ignorance,  and  even  covers  the  sheep- 
skin of  his  ignorance  with  the  lion-skin  of  erudition. 
I  shall  not  soon  forget  a  contributor  whose  English  was 
equal  in  barbarity  to  that  of  our  average  senator,  whose 
spelling  by  any  standard  was  atrocious,  and  whose  medical 
ideas  were  of  course  on  a  par  with  their  means  of  expres- 
sion ;  but  he  was  certain  of  one  thing,  that  he  wanted 
hemorrhage  "  spelled  rightly,  with  cb."  This  to  him  was 
the  symbol  of  scholarship, — his  nose  was  safely  in  the 
sand  of  erudition,  but  his  whole  body  was  delightfully 
visible. 

I  have  had  the  pleasure  of  replying  to  but  three  or  four 
critics  of  a  few  tiny  philologic  reforms  or  changes  that 
seemed  to  me  wise.  Besides  these  four  the  world  seems 
content  either  to  accept  or  to  reject  in  silence.  I  was 
struck  by  the  fact  that  in  all  four  of  the  speaking  objectors 
their  objections  were  solely  based  upon  two  foundations  : 
their  personal  dislike  of  change,  and  their  complete 
ignorance  of  philology.  Concerning  the  argument,  de gus- 
tibus,  there  is  surely  no  discussion,  because  taste,  proverb- 
ially, is  simply  a  subjective  affair.  But  dogmatic  opinion 
upon  a  subject  in  dispute,  the  deeply-rooted  dogmatism 
upon  things  without  a  single  minute's  study  of  them  or  of 
their  history, — this  in  a  supposably  scientific  man  is, — 
well !  let  us  call  it,  deplorable.  It  is  amusing,  even  instruc- 
tively amusing,  but  it  is,  once  more,  deplorable.  Such  a 
person,  if  a  surgeon,  would  be  shocked  if  you  asked  him 
to  pronounce  dogmatically  upon  an  unstudied  question  of 
therapeutics  or  of  mental  disease,  or  if  a  diagnostician  he 
would  not  express  the  least  judgment  as  to  cataract-extrac- 
tion, etc.,  but  without  an  instant's  study  of  philology  he 
settles  a  philologic  dispute  off-hand  and  forever.  Five 
minutes  of  glancing  through  any  one  of  the  hundreds  of 


42  CONCERNING   MEDICAL  LANGUAGE. 

books  on  the  subject  would  have  closed  his  lips,  but  that 
does  not  give  him  pause.  He  is  sustained  by  the  fact  that 
"  the  English  language  as  now  written  is  good  enough  for 
me,"  and  there  floats  through  his  mind  hazy  ideas  that 
etymology  demands  the  present  method,  and  that  at  best 
you  are  a  very  bothersome  and  conceited  person. 

To  one  who  has  pondered  the  subject,  however  little,  it 
must  be  painfully  apparent  that  every  other  product  uncon- 
sciously developed  in  the  evolution  of  the  race,  whether 
plows,  guns,  matches,  or  books,  has  been  found  capable 
of  betterment,  and  all  civilization  consists  in  improvement 
of  or  improvement  upon  the  crude  devices  of  early  awk- 
wardness. Why  should  language  then  be  an  exception  to 
the  rule  ?  Those  who  have  examined  carefully  aver  that 
our  language  is  a  sorry  instrument  of  thought,  and  bears 
about  the  same  likeness  to  an  ideal  language  that  a  hand- 
sickle  does  to  the  best  reaping  and  binding  machine  of 
our  day.  It  is  plain,  therefore,  that  the  obstinate  prejudice 
against  any  change  whatsoever  in  it  is  most  ill-advised  and 
unreasonable. 

We  do  not  advise  radical  changes.  The  proper  attitude 
of  mind  is  one  that  welcomes  slow  and  slight  changes  to- 
ward shortening  and  thus  lessening  the  severe  burden  of 
education,  and  the  expense  of  printing.  Reform  has  a 
double  motive  here,  psychologic  and  commercial.  It  has 
been  estimated  that  our  outrageous  spelling  costs  one  year 
of  school-life  of  every  child.  The  financial  saving  by  les- 
sening every  printed  page  one  line  would  probably  pay  the 
expenses  of  our  government,  and  perhaps  also  retire  on  a 
life-pension  the  Senate  besides.  This  line  could  be  saved, 
and  at  least  a  day  or  two  of  the  wasted  school-life  spared 
by  abolishing  cs  and  ^,  by  lopping  off  a  few  redundant  tails 
of  words,  and  by  observing  a  half-dozen  little  rules, — all  of 
which  are  not  only  advisable  but  philologically  necessary, 
not  only  not  improper  but  genuinely  proper. 


CONCERNING  MEDICAL  LANGUAGE.  43 

As  to  (B,  and  oe,  these  diphthongs  are  difficult  to  write,  and 
they  are  against  the  genius  of  the  language.  They  have 
already  been  sloughed  in  a  large  number  of  words,  and 
those  who  oppose  what  they  are  pleased  to  call  "  the  mu- 
tilation of  our  beloved  language,"  must  answer  our  demand 
for  a  rule.  Shall  we  reinsert  the  cb,  and  ce,  in  words  at 
present  spelled  with  ^,  and  which  were  derived  from  older 
words  spelled  with  the  darling  diphthongs  ?  And  if  you 
spell  hcemorrhage,  will  you,  as  you  should,  pronounce  it 
he'-mor-aj  ?  It  seems  to  me  the  etymologic  sticklers  are 
false  to  the  old  love,  however  true  they  may  be  to  the  new. 
Most  of  our  words,  for  example,  beginning  with  pre — are 
derived  from  the  Latin  prcz.  There  are  possibly  a  thousand 
of  these  words,  such  as  prescription,  prepuce,  pretend,  pre- 
ference, etc.  Shall  we  spell  them  all  prcBScription,  pr<2puce, 
etc  ?  Shall  we  also  be  (etymologically)  correct  and  write 
hceresy,  hceretic,  anapcest,  poeony,  phcenomenon,  mceander, 
hcematite,  cether,  dcsmon,  (Esthetic,  apharcssis,  diceresis,  archce- 
ology,  paleography,  gangrcBne,  pcedobaptist,  ccsnobite,  cceme- 
tery,  ccBlestial,  ceconotny,  epicoene,  oesophagus,  phoenix,  solcec- 
ism,  and  hundreds  of  derivatives  and  similar  words  as  they 
are  here  written  ?  Will  you  spell  diocese,  dioecese  ?  Will 
you  s^oSS.  fancy ,  frantic ,  and  frenzy  with,  a  very  etymologic- 
ally  proper  ph,  instead  of  an  incorrect  ff  If  so,  your 
phancy  will  make  your  readers  phrenzied,  and  you  phrantic, 
I  fear.  Will  you  write  tansy,  treacle  and  treasure  with  a 
th  ?  If  so,  lay  up  your  threasure  in  heaven,  and  drink  much 
threacle  and  thansy  while  your  days  do  last. 

Etymologic  spelling  is  a  long-exploded  absurdity.  It  has 
led  many  a  poor  word-grubber  into  the  quagmires  of  absurd- 
ity. It  was,  says  the  great  English  etymologist,  a  sort  of 
mania  in  the  sixteenth  century,  and  has  thrown  confusion 
and  ridicule  into  the  study  of  language.  "  Its  ignorant 
meddlesomeness  introduced  many  false  forms,"  so  that 
hardly  any  word  now  tells  its  genesis  or  history  by  its 


44  CONCERNING   MEDICAL  LANGUAGE. 

written  form.  Every  word  must  be  examined  separately, 
its  changes  both  of  form  and  sound  must  be  studied  his- 
torically, before  we  can  know  much  about  it.  The  final 
dictum  of  Skeat  is  as  follows  : — 

"  The  shortest  description  of  modern  spelling  is  to  say 
that,  speaking  generally,  it  represents  a  Victorian  pronun- 
ciation of  '  popular '  words  by  means  of  symbols  imper- 
fectly adapted  to  an  Elizabethan  pronunciation,  the  sym- 
bols themselves  being  mainly  due  to  the  Anglo-French 
scribes  of  the  Plantagenet  period,  whose  system  was  meant 
to  be  phonetic.  It  also  aims  at  suggesting  to  the  eye  the 
original  forms  of  '  learned '  words.  It  is  thus  governed  by 
two  conflicting  principles,  neither  of  which,  even  in  its  own 
domain,  is  consistently  carried  out." 

It  may  be  said  that  as  many  of  our  medical  terms  are 
not  derived  from  the  Greek  or  Latin  by  a  real  and  historical 
process,  but  are  de  novo  creations,  using  the  ancient  roots 
and  stems  as  convenient  materials  of  coinage,  the  objection 
does  not  hold,  and  that  our  words  do  therefore  show  their 
originals  by  their  form.  Alas !  not  even  this  poor  excuse 
bears  scrutiny.  The  centuries  have  infected  the  modern 
word-minter,  and  the  inevitable  hurry  and  destiny  of  evo- 
lution will  not  let  the  need  of  condensation  rest.  Even 
while  we  look  at  our  printed  dictionary  the  Zeitgeist  is  tele- 
scoping our  words.  Who  now  says  thyreoid  dind  choreoid? 
These  forms  are  perfectly  proper,  and  your  dictionary-man 
with  the  awful  sword  of  "  etymology  "  and  conservatism 
held  across  his  path,  may  be  forced  to  write  them  so,  but 
he  smiles  sadly  as  he  does  it  and  shakes  his  head  despond- 
ently. Every  one  of  the  hundreds  of  words  ending  in -oid 
is  derived  (supposably)  from  the  Greek  ei8oq.  Why,  then, 
is  it  -Old  and  not  -eidf  Bulb  and  Bulbar  should  be  bolb  and 
bolbar,  as  they  come  from  ^oX^oq.  Croup  is  from  A.  S.  kro- 
pan.  How  can  an  etymology-lover  write  hyoid?  What  re- 
semblance is  there  to  the  Greek  word  ?  Ourconvenient  com- 


CONCERNING  MEDICAL  LANGUAGE.  45 

pound  word  should  etymologically  be  spelled  thyreo-hyoeid, 
instead  of  thyro-hyoid.  Why  is  one  who  forbids  one  literal 
iota  of  change  in  present  words  so  utterly  indifferent  about 
the  changes  that  have  already  crept  in  in  the  past  ?  There 
are  thousands  of  words  in  which  Greek?" has  been  changed 
to  English  e,  as,  e.g.,  all  the  words  ending  in  rhoea.  He  is 
wrathful  because  one  wants  to  change  them  to  rhea  ;  why 
not  so  to  those  who  changed  the  original  i  to  ef  He  is  as 
idolatrous  of  his  beloved  thousand  hcBJUs,  but  the  Greek 
was  hai  and  not  hce.  One  of  the  most  ludicrous  instances 
of  this  imaginable  is  the  very  new  coinage  which  its  author 
spells  cceliotoiny.  The  anger  of  enraged  Jupiter  was  as 
nothing  to  that  aroused  by  the  suggestion  to  shorten  this 
to  celiotomy.  But  in  that  word  as  given  out,  there  is,  "  once 
you  trip  on  it,"  perhaps  not  "  twenty-nine,"  but  at  least  two 
or  three  "  distinct  damnations,  one  sure  if  another  fails." 
Why  in  the  name  of  holy  etymology,  if  derived  from  Greek 
xoiXia  do  we  have  c  instead  of  k,  and  why  cce  instead  of  coi-7 
If  the  coslia  is  derived  from  the  Latin,  then  why  the  hybrid  ? 
Surely  one  who  pretends  passionate  devotion  to  pretty 
Ettie  Mollie  G.,  must  not  at  the  same  time  be  paying 
court  to  her  hated  rival,  the  little  illegit  Miss  Hybrida.* 

Every  page  of  the  dictionaries  proves  the  absurdity  of 
trying  to  make  spelling  teach  etymology ;  and  it  is  a  fact 
that  not  anybody,  certainly  not  spelling-reformers,  more  cer- 
tainly not  the  conservatives,  cares  two  beans  for  the  ety- 
mology. If  we  did  not  have  the  printed  word  to  stamp 
the  coin  it  would  be  a  different  matter,  but  with  diction- 
aries everywhere  to  give  the  origins  and  histories  of  all 
words,  what  imaginable  service  or  usefulness  is  there  in 
the  attempt  to  load  each  down  with  its  biography  ?     In 


*  Another  sorry  neoplasm  is  uranalysis, — "  analysis  of  ur" — to  replace  an 
equally  absurd  word,  urinalysis, — "  alysis  of  urin."  We  have  looked  in  vain 
for  the  words  alysis,  and  ur. 


46  CONCERNING   MEDICAL   LANGUAGE. 

reading  or  speaking  no  one  can  think  or  wishes  to  think  of 
the  roots  thousands  of  years  old.  As  well  demand  that 
your  bouquet  of  roses  shall  have  their  roots  and  soil.  The 
investigating  botanist  may  do  so,  and  may  know  all  about 
the  root  and  branch  and  stem,  but  workaday  folk  are  not 
botanists  or  radical  philologists.  If  one  in  reading  had  to 
know  or  keep  in  mind  a  half- conscious  recognition  of  the 
etymology  of  each  word,  he  would  be  able  to  read  about 
one  book  a  year,  civilization  and  science  would  stagnate, 
and  we  might,  could,  would,  or  should  all  become  congress- 
men, millionaires,  or  jingoes. 

The  only  proper  and  sensible  purpose  of  spelling  is  its 
phonetic  purpose.  All  the  philologic  tories  of  all  christian- 
dom  or  heathendom  combined  cannot  prevent  the  inevita- 
ble modifications — even  entire  changes  of  the  spoken 
sound.  In  that  witches'  cauldron  of  modern  English,  es- 
pecially the  medical  variety,  we  have  from  every  source 
cooked  a  most  remarkable  hodgepodge  of  illogic  and  incon- 
sequential conglomeration.  Our  ancestors  have  com- 
manded us  to  eat  of  it,  but  do  not  let  us  choke  it  down, 
hiding  our  tears  of  disgust,  and  vowing  it  is  incomparably 
toothsome.  We  assuredly  should  not  with  glee  add  more 
of  the  worst  to  the  olla  podrida,  and  when  we  have  a  justi- 
fiable opportunity  to  make  it  a  millionth  part  better,  we 
should  not  set  up  a  cry  of  revolt,  and  cry,  sacrilege  !  In 
an  African  forest  the  trail  or  pathway  has  constantly  recur- 
ring detours,  angles  and  curves,  so  that  one  walks  about 
twice  as  far  as  necessary  to  reach  landsend.  No  object 
prevents  following  a  straight  line.  Why  is  this  ?  It  is 
because  once  a  tree  blew  down  here  across  the  path,  there 
a  limb  broke  off,  there  a  stone  rolled  down.  So  the  savage 
went  around  these  objects,  forming  a  new  and  crooked 
path.  When  the  termites  devoured  the  tree  the  new  trail 
was  more  worn  than  the  old  one,  and  with  thoughtless 
imitation  the  men  kept  on  laboriously  winding  and  twist- 


CONCERNING   MEDICAL  LANGUAGE.  47 

ing  their  way  instead  of  going  straight  on  and  across.  It 
is  the  barbarian's  habit  of  mind  to  keep  on  the  unreasoning 
way  his  predecessor  traveled.  It  is  the  essence  of  civiliza- 
tion to  make  straight  the  way.  The  incongruities  of  medi- 
cal nomenclature  and  the  stock-still  standing  of  irrational 
conservatism  lead  one  to  wonder  if  we  are  ever  to  awaken  to 
the  need  of  philologic  civilization.  No  judicious  reformer 
asks  for  revolution,  but  for  evolution ;  we  need  be  in  no 
hurry  ;  we  should  not  make  profound  and  radical  changes, 
because  (and  only  because)  it  is  impossible  to  bring  them 
about ;  but  when  men  oppose  every  jot  and  tittle  of  change, 
when  they  fight  against  one  single  conscious  change  of 
precisely  the  same  kind  as  has  already  been  a  thousand 
times  unconsciously  wrought, — then  surely  one  must  with 
open-eyed  astonishment  ask,  Really,  now,  were  you  not 
born  in  Africa  ? 

I  wish  again  to  emphasize  the  limitation  that  we  do 
not  advise  one  clean  straight  jump  into  phonetic  spelling, 
simply  because  it  is  impossible.  We  seem  like  some 
mothers, — the  uglier  and  sicklier  our  orthographic  child 
the  more  we  love  and  cherish  it.  The  maternal  love  is 
wise,  but  the  other  is  mania.  Turn  to  Germany  and  what 
do  we  find  ?  So  far  as  phonetic  writing  is  concerned  their 
language  was  already  marvelously  perfect,  but  because  it 
was  not  entirely  perfect  the  Germans  within  a  few  past 
years  have  made  it  so.  With  us,  whose  spelling  is  the  butt 
of  the  world's  ridicule,  with  us  we  shriek  our  parrot-anger 
or  growl  our  ursine  bigotry  if  one  suggest  lopping  off  a 
supernumerary  finger  from  our  hideous  teratologic  thing. 
What  kind  of  a  nation  is  this  Germany  ?  Well,  for  one 
thing,  she  delights  to  pay  her  debts  with  value-received, 
while  another  nation  we  know  of,  from  the  hollows  of  lost 
manhood  and  politic  poltroonery,  squeaks  and  squizzles  its 
senatorial  sixteen  to  one.  Another  thing  about  this  foolish 
Germany  is  that  when  a  foolish  nation  attacks  her,  at  once 


48         CONCERNING  MEDICAL  LANGUAGE. 

her  edict  of  blood  and  iron  goes  forth,  and  in  a  hurricane 
of  heroic  energy  her  legions  sweep  resistless  over  a  con- 
quered land  into  the  capital  city  of  the  world,  and  crown 
her  Emperor  there  in  the  coronation-halls  of  dead  Bour- 
bonism.  How  is  it  with  another  nation  ?  To  show  our 
braggart  boorishness  we  intermeddle  in  another  nation's 
rebellion,  or  we  espouse  the  cause  of  a  half-barbaric  folk 
thousands  of  miles  away,  for  whom  we  do  not  care  a  fig, 
against  the  world's  one  great  civilizing  and  colonizing 
nation,  and  with  a  corporal's  guard  of  25,000  soldiers  cry. 
War,  War,  War !  How  is  it  with  Germany  as  to  science 
generally,  and  education,  and  especially  as  to  medical 
science?  The  thousands  of  our  young  men  sent  to  her 
laboratories  is  sufficient  answer.  Well,  this  nation,  as  I 
have  said,  in  a  few  years,  and  at  one  sweep,  has  cut  the 
Gordian  knot  of  spelling,  simplified  and  shortened  education 
thereby,  and  while  we  are  squirming  and  making  wry 
mouths  over  a  few  paltry  and  insignificant  changes,  she  has 
wholly  reformed  the  language  that  Gcethe  and  Lessing 
wrote. 

One  of  my  four  kind  critics  once  wrote  me  remonstrat- 
ing, solely  on  the  ground  of  euphony,  against  cutting  the 
-al  off  the  tail  end  of  many  adjectives  ;  "  he  didn't  like  it," 
he  said,  "  it  didn't  sound  well."  He  seemed  wholly 
forgetful  that  the  overlong  tail  of  a  thousand  such  words 
had  already  been  lopped  off,  or  perhaps  had  never  grown 
out.  In  some  countries  the  sheeps'  tails  are  so  long  that" 
they  hitch  a  tiny  wagon  to  each  animal,  so  that  it  hauls  its 
caudal  extremity  instead  of  dragging  it  on  the  ground. 
Now  the  difference  between  these  sheep  and  our  medical 
Bo  Peep  ^/-pacas,  is  that  the  words  grow  no  valuable  wool 
on  their  tails,  and  that  we  trawl  them  on  the  ground 
behind  us  as  the  ladies  do  their  dress-trails.  Sheep  and 
words  and  ladies  are  alike  in  the  one  important  respect 
that,  in  the  poet's  immortal  lines,  we  let  them  alone  and 


CONCERNING  MEDICAL  LANGUAGE.         49 

they  surely  come  home,  dragging  their  tails  (and  much 
else  also)  behind  them. 

To  my  genial  critic  who  wished  his  words  and  sheep  (his 
ladies,  too,  I  wonder  ?)  to  have  tails  and  trails  twice  too 
long,  I  sent  the  following  skit,  to  illustrate  the  already 
recognized  fact  of  the  redundancy  of  many  word-tails, 
and  to  suggest  that  we  either  retail  all  the  short-tailed 
curs,  or  that  we  curtail  all  the  long-tailed  puppies.  Either 
one  thing  or  the  other ;  if  you  refuse  to  say  chemic  and 
theoretic,  then  you  must  not  say  scientific  and  hydrochloric. 
If  you  make  us  say  chemical  and  theoretical,  then,  like  a 
sucking  dove  we  will  roar  you  for  consistency  and  ask 
that  you  be  scientifical,  or  else  we  will  prescribe  nitrical 
and  hydrochlorical  acid  for  your  alarming  gastrical  torpor 
and  obstinacy.  My  strabismic  letter  to  my  friend  was  as 
follows : — 

Some  Scientifical  Difficulties. — The  patient  was  at  the 
Polyclinical  Hospital — a  very  sick  woman  ;  she  was  ascitical  and 
cyanotical ;  she  had  an  anemical  (dicrotical  or  anacrotical) 
murmur;  splanchnical  and  splenical  dulness  was  pronounced. 
Neither  the  ailopathical  nor  the  homeopathical  consultants  could 
determine  whether  the  affection  was  of  extrinsical  or  intrinsical 
origin,  whether  anabolical,  katabolical,  atrophical,  septicemical, 
lithemical,  luetical,  hemical,  hemolytical,  thermical,  tabetical, 
hepatical,  or  encephalical.  The  specialists  were  called  in,  and 
laryngoscopical,  ophthalmoscopical,  gynecological  and  otoscop- 
ical  examinations  were  made.  The  laryngoscopical  man  said  a 
diphtheritical  membrane  was  forming,  and  the  phrenical  nerve 
was  pressed  upon.  The  next  averred  the  difficulty  was  eso- 
phorical  or  exophorical,  that  a  blennorrhagical  inflammation, 
perhaps  a  rheumatical  iritis  existed.  After  an  endoscopical  ex- 
amination the  gynecological  expert  said  pelvical  (or  pubical) 
disorder  was  present  and  a  bad  cystical  and  chorionical  state  of 
affairs.  The  ear-man  claimed  that  the  disease  was  specifical, 
that  the  otical  ganglion  was  syphilitical  and  its  condition 
5 


5o         CONCERNING  MEDICAL  LANGUAGE. 

pathognomonical.  The  diagnostical  and  prognostical  difficulties 
were  certes  becoming  most  prolifical ! 

As  to  therapeutical  measures,  one  advised  cardiacal  and  tonical 
treatment,  another  hypodermical ;  one  thought  hydriatical 
methods  good,  another  antiphlogistical,  while  still  another  sug- 
gested hypnotical  and  soporifical  agents.  Galvanical  and 
faradical  electricity,  as  well  as  statical  and  franklinical,  were 
advised.  The  surgeon  after  a  diagnostical  incision  (under 
anesthetical  precautions)  spoke  of  a  plastical  operation.  Caus- 
tical  applications  to  the  throat  were  considered  good,  and  the 
exhibition  of  prussical,  or  of  borical,  nitrical  and  hydrochlorical 
acids,  perhaps  also  carbolical  with  malical  and  acetical  acid 
drinks.  The  general  physician  thought  antineuralgical  and 
antirheumatical  prescriptions  sufficient,  but  the  obstetrician 
would  have  added  oxytocical  ones. 

The  patient  died  of  aZ-coholical  paretical  dementia,  super- 
induced, it  is  thought,  by  despair  at  the  orthographical  and 
phonetical  conservatism  of  progressive  Americans. 

To  make  short  work  of  it,  the  essence  of  the  matter 
concerning  -ic  and  -ical  is  this : — Both  of  the  suffixes,  -ic 
and  -ical  are  terminals,  the  significance  of  which  is  to  give 
an  adjectival  meaning  to  a  word.  To  add  them  both  to 
one  word  is  to  contend  that  dogs  and  sheep  should  either 
have  two  tails,  or  that  one  tail  should  be  twice  as  long  as 
normal.  If  the  suffix,  -ic,  gives  the  adjectival  meaning, 
why  add  a  second?  The  French,  from  whom  we  get 
many  of  the  -ic  terminations  find  it  unnecessary  to  add  an 
-al.  If  a  word  is  an  adjective  can  you  make  it  more  so  by 
tautologic  caudalizations  ?  (There  are  a  few  words  whose 
stems  end  in  -ic  such  as  vesical,  clinical,  logical,  finical,  etc., 
and  these  require  the  -al  to  make  them  adjectives,  but  these 
are  provings  of  the  rule,  and  the  query  why  you  don't  say 
vesic,  logic,  and  clinic,  is  the  prompting  of  thoughtlessness. 
I  would  not  object  however,  in  the  least,  to  clipping  these 
also.)    If  a  word  needs  two  adjectival  tails  why  should  we  not 


CONCERNING  MEDICAL  LANGUAGE.  51 

say  bestialicy  linealic,  etc.  ?  If  these  were  admitted  of  course 
the  -al  lovers  would  have  to  add  their  pet  to  the  word,  and 
we  should  have  bestialical,  linealical,  etc., — each  sheep 
would  then  require  two  toy-wagons.  This  reminds  one  of 
the  wonderful  word,  pockethandkerchief.  The  primary 
good  word  was  kerchief,  a  head-covering.  We  now  call  a 
piece  of  lace  or  linen  a  pocket-hand-head-covering :  I  am 
not  unmindful  of  the  hyperfinical  distinction  that  some 
hyperfinical  folk  have  sought  to  establish  as  regards  -ic  and 
-ical,  -ac,  and  -acal,  that  the  -ics  and  -acs  denote  primary 
objective  attributes  of  or  pertaining  to  the  things,  whilst 
the  -teals  and  the  -acals  denote  secondary  qualities — of  the 
nature  of  or  connected  with  the  attribute  in  -ic  or  -ac,  i.  e., 
more  remotely  and  subjectively  relating  to  the  thing.  For 
example,  a  cardiac  valve,  the  cardiacal  qualities  of  a  drug ; 
a  historic  answer ;  a  historical  treatise;  a  comic  paper ;  a 
comical  idea.  But  this  contention  is  impossible  of  realiza- 
tion,— I.  Because  hundreds  of  words  by  custom  have 
become  absolutely  limited  to  either  form  singly  and  alone ; 
2.  Because  not  even  the  best  writers  observe  the  distinc- 
tion ;  3.  It  is  altogether  too  fine  a  distinction  to  be  made 
by  the  ordinary  workaday  humanity ;  4.  It  would  not 
satisfy  the  -^/ophites,  who  want  the  -al  on  the  end  of  some 
of  their  words,  without  question,  forever,  and  ever,  world 
without  end.  Amen !  Think  of  saying  Arabical,  Teutonical, 
Celtical,  etc. !  We  should  of  course  have  to  adopt  besiialic 
and  bestialical  (or  bestic  and  bestical),  clinic  and  clittical, 
syphilitic  and  syphilitical,  and  so  on  to  the  end.  It  is  quite 
plain  this  system-mongering  and  analogy-craze  leads  us 
into  sorry  plights.  In  fact,  it  should  be  apparent  upon  a 
minute's  reflection  that  in  a  language  so  utterly  composite, 
illogical  and  non-systemic  as  ours,  the  argument  from  or 
for  analogy  is  absurdity  itself.  In  one  respect  this  is  an 
advantage,  because  when  we  can  succeed  in  battering 
down  the  dead  wall  of  ancient  prejudice,  and  explode  the 


52  CONCERNING  MEDICAL  LANGUAGE. 

arsenal  of  etymological  spelling,  then  we  may  bring  some 
order  and  sanity  in  the  rebellious  mob  of  English  words. 

Of  one  thing  we  may  rest  assured :  All  the  tory  immo- 
bility of  all  the  world  cannot  prevent  change.  It  is  as  useless 
to  attempt  it  as  to  try  to  stop  the  rising  tide,  or  to  stay  the 
resistless  and  silent  forces  of  evolution  itself.  It  is  the  part 
of  wisdom  to  guide  evolution,  not  to  fight  it  to  the  death, 
to  guide  language-evolution  in  the  interests  of  brevity 
and  perspicacity,  not  to  cling  irrationally  to  the  old  ways 
which  clear  vision  may  clearly  see  are  doomed.  The 
language  of  Chaucer,  and  even  of  Shakespeare,  as  shown  in 
the  original  forms,  is  an  utterly  different  language  from  that 
we  speak  to-day.  The  ordinary  American,  if  he  could  hear 
Chaucer  speaking,  or  if  he  could  listen  to  a  phonographic 
repetition  of  his  actual  speech,  could  not  understand  a 
sentence,  hardly  a  word  of  it.  The  printed  form  cannot 
bind  the  ever-fluctuating  pronunciation.  The  province  or 
function  of  the  printed  (or  written)  word  is  to  stand  as  a 
symbol  or  visible  analogue  of  the  spoken  word.  Etymol- 
ogy to  the  dogs !  Printing  makes  certain  a  record  of  the 
etymology,  but  to  seek  to  clog  the  word  itself  with  it  is 
the  worst  of  delusions.  Our  duty  scientifically,  socio- 
logically, and  philologically  is  to  keep  the  printed  form 
plastic.  The  crystallized  language  is  a  dead  language, 
and  when  there  is  no  plasticity  of  language  there  is  none 
of  the  minds  and  civilization  of  those  who  speak  that 
language.  There  is  a  subtle,  but  all-powerful  reaction  and 
retroaction  of  language  upon  mind.  Men  progressive  in 
science  and  sociology  must  be  progressive  in  language  and 
the  use  of  language.  Prick  a  German  word  and  it  bleeds. 
There  is  the  pulsing  heart  of  meaning  behind  it,  flooding 
it  with  sanguine  significance.  French  words,  and  the 
Greek-derived  or  Latin-derived  words  of  our  own  tongue 
are  as  bloodless,  dead  and  meaningless  as  are  to  us  Chinese 
pictographs.     The  comparison  of  the  large,  plastic,  ener- 


CONCERNING  MEDICAL  LANGUAGE.  53 

getic,  capable  German  with  the  narrow,  crystalline,  station- 
ary, incapable  Frenchman  must  at  once  spring  into  view, 
and  the  prophecy  is  clear  as  to  which  one  is  to  inherit  the 
future.  The  French  birth-rate  is  about  equal  to  the  death- 
rate  ;  that  of  the  Teuton  is  far  in  excess.  Do  you  believe 
in  progressive  Teutonism,  and  Anglo-Saxonism,  or  in 
reactionism,  toryism,  and  ultramontism  ?  Choose  your 
partners,  gentlemen.  Your  choice  in  so  little  a  matter  as 
the  use  of  words  will  tell  the  plain  story  of  mental  bias, 
quite  as  well  as  the  choice  of  religion  or  of  political  party. 
Specifically,  the  microscopic  modifications  I  have  urged 
here  are  as  follows  : — 

1.  Abolish  in  English  words  the  archaic,  unnecessary, 
bothersome  (B  and  ce,  supplanting  it  by  e. 

2.  Cease  adding  the  tautologic  -al  to  adjectives  having 
already  one  adjectival  suffix,  -ic.  It  is  already  done  in 
thousands  of  words  ;  finish  the  job. 

3.  Drop  the  useless  hyphen  in  words  whose  parts  are 
derived  from  classic  languages.  In  ten  thousand  words 
you  have  already  done  so ;  finish  with  the  rest.  But  retain 
the  hyphen  in  such  compound  terms  as  express  a  single 
idea  by  two  semifused  English  words,  especially  when  both 
are  nouns.  E.  g.,  say  antitoxin  (not  anti-toxiji),  culdesac, 
(not  cul-de-sac),  postmortem,  (not  post-mortem)  ventrofixa- 
tion, (not  ventre- fixation),  etc.  Keep  the  hyphen,  because 
it  is  necessary  to  avoid  confusion  and  doubtfulness  of  mean- 
ing, in  curet-spoon,  heart-murmur,  skin-disease,  sleeping- 
sickness,  etc. 

4.  Drop  the  useless  -te  from  curet,  brunet,fourchet,  etiquet, 
cigaret,  etc.  You  have  already  lopped  it  off  from  cutlet, 
doublet,  quartet,  quintet,  sextet,  septet,  racket,  minuet,  fillet, 
corset,  stylet,  tourniquet,  bouquet,  etc.     Finish  the  job. 

In  the  same  way  cut  off  the  useless  -me{xovc\  many  words, 
writing  program,  gram,  centigram,  etc.,  j  ust  as  already  we  do 
telegram,  anagram,  diagram ^  epigram;  let's  make  an  end  of  it. 


54  CONCERNING  MEDICAL  LANGUAGE. 

5.  Use  figures  instead  of  spelling  out  numbers,  at  least 
those  above  ten. 

6.  Anglicise  foreign  terms  when  a  goodly  proportion  of 
your  readers  will  not  understand  them  in  the  originals. 
Use  italics  as  little  as  possible ;  use  as  few  foreign  words 
and  terms  as  possible,  because  the  vast  majority  of  your 
audience  cannot  understand  them  (even  if  you  do) :  and 
because  there's  a  deal  of  silly  conceit  in  airing  exotics  of 
speech. 

7.  As  to  the  spelling  of  chemic  terms,  accept  the  recom- 
mendations of  the  American  Association  for  the  Advance- 
ment of  Science,  which  after  years  of  dispassionate  investi- 
gation advised  that  we  drop  the  final  e  in  bromid,  iodid,  etc., 
and  in  bromin,  iodin,  atropin,  gumin,  etc.  Say  phenol  instead 
o{  carbolic  acid,  glycerol  ms\.Q2id  oi  glycerin,  etc. 

8.  Abolish  all  diereses  and  accents.  They  cannot  teach 
pronunciation,  and  they  are  useless  luggage.  Let  us  write 
oophorectomy,  cooperation,  piomain,  leucomain,  etc.,  without 
the  diereses.  When  a  foreign  word  is  Anglicised  let  us 
do  it  completely,  and  not  drag  over  into  our  domain  the 
exotics  of  foreign  habit,  leaving  it,  e.  g.,  neither  English  nor 
French.  Leave  to  the  poets  the  acute,  the  grave,  and  the 
circumflex  accents,  that  are  foreign  to  the  spirit  of  our  own 
tongue. 

9.  Do  not  bother  about  hybrid  terms.  A  mule  is  a 
better  animal  than  either  its  father  or  its  mother.  It  is  only 
finicky  sticklers  that  are  horrified  by  hybrid  words.  There 
are  many,  many  thousands  of  them  in  our  language,  good 
words  too,  that  have  been  used  for  centuries,  and  that 
always  will  be  used.  There  is  no  earthly  objection  to 
them, — and  indeed  we  should  rather  welcome  them  if  they 
are  good  words,  expressive  and  short.  More  than  any 
other  language  ours  is  adapted  to  receive  them  and  use 
them,  and  there  are  more  of  them  in  it  than  in  any  other 
language.     Instead  of  being  ashamed  of  the  fact  we  should 


CONCERNING  MEDICAL  LANGUAGE.  55 

be  proud  of  it,  as  it  shows  our  receptivity  and  plasticity. 
If  we  are  bound  to  have  the  defects  of  our  virtues,  let  us 
not  be  ashamed  of  the  virtues  of  our  defects. 

Finally,  I  would  beg  that  you  carefully  consider  the 
source  and  secret  reasons  that  exist  for  opposition  to  the 
foregoing  recommendations.  Ignorance,  colossal,  imper- 
turbable, impertinent  ignorance  is  characteristic  of  much 
of  it.  Read,  for  example,  the  letters  in  the  British  Medical 
Journal  from  correspondents  (not  editorial  utterances,  be- 
cause the  editors  know  better,  and  have  publicly  advised 
dropping  cb  and  oe),  and  you  will  see  these  objectors  havn't 
studied  philology  five  minutes  in  their  lives,  and  are  living 
in  an  antediluvian  world. 

But,  again  consider  the  source,  I  beg  of  you,  and  you 
will  very  often  find  that  it  is  the  secret  influence  of  the 
commercial  medical  publisher  that  is  at  work.  He  pub- 
lishes a  dictionary  committed  to  the  old  ways,  and  hence 
prints  his  medical  journals  and  books  in  the  archaic  lan- 
guage of  his  dictionary.  It  means  expense  and  loss  of 
money  to  him  in  very  many  ways  to  have  his  "  authorities  " 
supplanted.  The  astute  editor  of  the  Journal  of  the  Ameri- 
can Medical  Association  has  caught  this  aspect  of  the  matter, 
and  an  editorial  in  one  of  the  issues  of  Jan  uary,  1 896,  happily 
sets  it  forth.  It  becomes  an  important  concern  of  the  pro- 
fession whether  it  has  any  scientific  and  literary  rights,  and 
if  it  shall  govern  itself  or  be  governed  by  its  publishing 
servants,  very  accommodating  editors,  and  self-interest 
generally.  What  an  instructive  fact  it  is  to  see  a  journal 
that  has  once  been  taught  how  to  spell  go  back  under  the 
domination  of  commercialism  to  the  "  flesh-pots  of  Egypt." 
In  this  connection  it  is  worthy  of  note  that  the  two  con- 
siderable journals  of  the  United  States  not  controlled  by 
the  commercial  publisher,  the  Boston  Medical  and  Surgical 
Journal  (representing  the  best  literary  and  scientific  culture 
of  the  eastern  states)  and  the  Journal  of  the  Association, 


56  CONCERNING  MEDICAL  LANGUAGE. 

(representing  also  the  enterprise  and  freedom  of  the  western 
and  of  all  states)  have  long  ago  adopted  and  do  now  use 
the  more  progressive  methods  of  spelling.  The  same 
practice  on  the  part  of  many  other  reputable  journals,  and 
the  unanimous  acceptance  of  it  by  the  American  Medical 
Editor's  Association  three  years  ago,* — these  and  more, 


*  From  The  Medical  A'Jrewj,  June  17,  1893,  I  reproduce  from  the  paper 
read  at  the  meeting  of  the  American  Medical  Editors'  Association  in  Mil- 
waukee, June  5,  1893,  the  following  sentences  : — 

1.  Of  all  the  languages  of  the  civilized  world  there  is  none  that  in  the 
most  distant  manner  can  rival  the  English  in  the  ludicrous  illogicality  and 
wretched  lawlessness  of  its  orthography.  In  other  languages  there  is  a 
manifest  philologic  sanity  that  evidently  seeks  to  hold  the  written  (or  printed) 
word  in  some  sort  of  relationship  with  the  spoken  word.  But  in  our  language 
the  reverse  seems  to  be  the  case  ;  the  more  methods  in  which  a  single  sound 
can  be  spelled  the  better  it  seemed  to  please  the  fathers  of  the  language. 
As  Professor  Lounsbury  says :  "  There  is  nothing  more  contemptible  than 
our  present  spelling,  unless  it  be  the  reasons  usually  given  for  clinging  to  it." 

2.  The  labor  which  this  fact  imposes  upon  the  child's  mind,  and  upon  all 
minds  that,  so  far  as  language- learning  goes,  persist  in  the  prepubertic  stage, 
is  a  labor  that  conceived  in  its  entirety  is  literally  appalling.  The  German 
child  learns  in  one  year,  and  well,  what  the  English  child  learns  in  three, 
and  poorly. ■)■  It  is  so  tremendous  a  labor  that  even  few  educated  men  reach 
unconsciousness  and  ease  of  orthography,  and  for  the  great  mass  of  people 
it  is  a  constant  source  of  worry  or  chagrin.  To  a  vast  number  of  people  the 
secret  consciousness  of  their  orthographic  failing  keeps  them  from  the  pleasure 
of  writing  and  composition,  or  prevents  them  from  profitable  employment. 
To  every  person  that  writes,  the  excess  of  labor  required  by  our  barbaric 
spelling  is  a  huge  waste  of  time  and  a  heightener  of  the  friction  of  life. 
With  the  correlated  barbarism  of  pronunciation,  it  is  the  greatest  obstacle  to 
the  spread  of  English  as  the  world's  great,  sole  tongue. 

3.  The  foregoing  facts  are  so  incontrovertible  that  no  one  who  has  even 
cursorily  looked  into  philology  and  pedagogics  has  any  tendency  to  deny 
them.  Equally  certain  is  it  that  all  of  our  great  students  and  masters  of 
philology  are  entirely  agreed  as  to  the  tremendous  importance  of  lessening 
the  burdensome  labor  of  education,  and  the  friction  of  life,  by  some  approach, 

f  Professor  March  says  that  "  it  has  been  computed  that  we  throw  away 
$15,000,000  a  year  paying  teachers  for  addling  the  brains  of  our  children 
with  bad  spelling,  and  at  least  5100,000,000  more  paying  printers  and  pub- 
lishers for  sprinkling  our  books  and  papers  with  silent  letters." 


CONCERNING  MEDICAL  LANGUAGE.  57 

are  most  encouraging  proofs  of  our  freedom  from  prejudice 
and  dogmatism,  and  that  we  are  alive  to  the  demands  of 
literary  as  well  as  scientific  progress.  The  suggestion  need 
hardly  be  added  that  as  without  payment  we  give  our  arti- 
cles, the  product  of  our  laborious  lives  and  of  our  devo- 
tion, to  nonmedical  men,  out  of  which  they  make  fortunes, 

great  or  little,  toward  the  phonetic  spelling  of  English  words.  As  succinctly 
stated  in  his  preface  by  the  learned  editor  of  the  great  Century  Dictionary  : 
"  The  language  is  struggling  toward  a  more  consistent  and  phonetic  spelling, 
and  it  is  proper  in  disputed  and  doubtful  cases  to  cast  the  influence  of  the 
dictionary  in  favor  of  this  movement,  both  by  its  own  usage  in  the  body 
of  the  text,  and  at  the  head  of  articles  by  the  order  of  forms,  or  the  selection 
of  the  form  under  which  the  word  shall  be  treated." 

Never  has  more  capital  been  invested  in  similar  enterprises,  and  never  has 
more  philologic  erudition  been  gathered  to  the  service  than  in  the  editing 
and  publishing  of  those  splendid  lexicographic  monuments  of  American 
scholarship,  the  New  Webster,  the  Century,  and  the  Standard  dictionaries. 
It  is  equally  true  that  in  each  case  the  most  earnest  desire  of  the  men  in 
charge  of  these  works  has  been  to  go  to  the  furthest  admissible  limit  dared 
in  recommending  the  shortening  and  rationalizing  of  the  spelling  of  English 
words.  They  have  only  stopped  when  and  where  they  thought  further 
advance  would  result  in  a  baulking,  and  a  refusal  of  the  people  to  follow. 

Words  fail  me  to  express  my  amazement  to  hear  men  object  to  all  change 
in  the  customary  spelling.  To  be  sure,  they  are  but  few,  and  those  who  have 
never  given  the  matter  an  hour's  thought  or  study,  who  thus  blindly  cling  to 
the  fetich  of  custom,  stolidly  resisting  any  change  whatsoever.  The  changes 
that  have  been  made,  and  that  have  become  the  rule — these  they  willingly 
accept.  They  have  grown  used  to  spelling  music  and  public  without  a  final  k, 
and  are  willing  to  leave  off  this  useless  second  tail.  (The  English  even  now 
stick  to  the  final  k  in  almanac.)  But  their  mental  forefathers  as  stoutly 
resisted  the  curtailing  process,  and  their  similarly-minded  children  will  finally 
accept  the  changes  that  progressive  minds  are  now  forcing  on  their  fathers. 
The  stupidest,  most  disgusting  thing  in  the  world,  is  the  brute  conservatism 
that  refuses  all  change,  good  or  not  good,  from  stolid,  unreasoning  desire 
for  things  as  they  are.  Better  chorea,  ay,  better  epilepsy  than  absolute 
paralysis.  Conservatism  is  the  sham  coyness  of  linguistic  old-maidism,  the 
crinolin  fig-leaf  of  philologic  prudery,  a  fig-leaf,  too,  not  the  result  of  too 
much,  but  of  too  little  knowledge — indeed,  of  an  abysmal  ignorance  of  the 
history  of  the  language. 

And  most  strange  of  all  is  such  a  dead-blank  wall  of  prejudice  on  the  part 
of  medical  men.  Their  science  is  a  progressive  one  j  their  life  is  harassed 
6 


58  CONCERNING   MEDICAL  LANGUAGE. 

it  hardly  becomes  them  to  dictate  to  us  as  to  literary  and 
scientific  matters.  If  you  contribute  to  these  journals  you 
have  a  perfect  right  to  demand  that  your  ideas  of  language 
shall  be  followed  in  their  printing.  Accompany  your  arti- 
cle or  book  with  the  condition  that  your  choice  of  spelling- 
methods,  etc.,  be  carried  out. 


and  hurried  with  the  crush  of  duties  and  opportunities.  Every  hour's  experi- 
ence teaches  them  to  ignore  precedent  and  to  cut  by  the  shortest  route  to  the 
desired  end.  No  body  of  men  is  more  hampered,  and  in  no  calHng  is  labor 
so  much  thwarted  as  in  theirs,  by  popular  inherited  prejudices,  and  the  old 
unsloughed  snake-skins  of  quackery,  of  myth,  and  of  mummery. 

The  vast  majority  of  medical  words  have  not  grown  out  of  the  old 
languages,  either  of  the  ancient  living  Greek  or  of  the  medievally  preserved 
dead  Greek.  When  a  word  is  desired  the  modern  minter  snaps  out  his 
Liddell  and  Scott,  gets  some  words  that  best  suit  his  purpose,  and  shakes 
them  together  in  his  etymologic  basket  until  they  cohere  into  some  sort  of 
unity,  not  infrequently  a  very  ludicrous  one. 

The  argument  most  relied  on  by  the  obstructionists  is  the  etymologic  one. 
But  even  this  poor  scarecrow  cannot  be  set  up  in  our  medical  cornfields. 
I  do  not  think  the  etymologic  argument  of  much  force,  even  in  the  general 
literary  language,  because  already  the  form  in  a  large  portion  of  our  words  is 
altogether  misleading,  changed,  or  lost,  and  because  the  vast  majority  of 
people  will  and  can  never  know  anjrthing  of  the  etymologic  rootings  of  their 
language.  But,  far  more  important  still  is  the  fact  that  with  printing  came 
the  impossibility  of  a  coinage  ever  being  lost,  its  history  unrecorded,  or  its 
tiniest  rootlet  unpreserved. 

But  far  and  away  over  all  is  the  fact  that  the  needs  and  the  help  of  the 
living  millions  of  bodies  and  minds  present  and  to  come  outweigh  linguistic 
and  philologic  considerations.  Language  was  made  for  man,  not  man  for 
language. 

Moreover,  and  this  note  well,  despite  all  the  literary  coxcombs  and  philo- 
logic old  maids  of  Christendom,  reform  is  inevitable.  The  people,  with 
unerring  instinct,  are  determined  to  mold  their  language  into  some  better 
conformity  to  their  needs.  Slang  is  riotously  rampant,  and  slang  is  language 
in  the  making.  Some  reform  in  spelling  is  as  certain  to  come  as  future  men 
and  women  are  certain  to  come,  and  wisdom  on  our  part  is  to  accept  the 
inevitable,  and  to  make  that  inevitable  as  sensible  as  we  can.  As  another  has 
said :  *'  The  grammarian,  the  purist,  the  pernicketty  stickler  for  trifles  is  the 
deadly  foe  of  good  English,  rich  in  idioms  and  racy  of  the  soil." 


THE    ROLE    OF   MATERNAL   LOVE    IN    OR- 
GANIC EVOLUTION.* 

In  his  address  before  the  British  Association  Lord  SaHs- 
bury  recapitulated  the  three  great  mysteries  to  the  solution 
of  which  science  has  in  vain  directed  her  attention.  The 
origins  of  atoms,  of  ether,  and  of  Ufe,  are  to-day  the  most 
utter  mysteries.  To  account  for  them  no  human  mind  has 
framed  even  the  faintest  concept  worthy  of  consideration. 
We  have  only  the  merest  hints  of  the  possibility  of  explana- 
tion of  gravitation ;  concerning  electricity  we  are  getting 
only  a  little  better  idea ;  but  as  to  physiologic  chemistry 
our  little  knowledge  serves  only  to  make  our  great  ignor- 
ance more  frightful.  All  origins  of  things  are  shrouded  in 
impenetrable  mystery,  and  our  philosophies  are  but  weak 
and  sorry  attempts  to  widen  the  light  a  wee  little  bit  about 
us.  No  philosophy  and  no  religion  explains  finalities,  and 
all  efforts  end  only  in  resolving  many  lesser  mysteries  into 
fewer  great  mysteries.  The  conception  of  Biologos,  incom- 
ing light  and  love,  entering  inorganic  worlds  and  matter  as 
a  great  incarnation-principle  and  spiritualizing  force,  electri- 
fies and  quickens  the  mental,  imaginative,  and  moral  man 
as  none  other ;  but,  of  course,  it  too  ends  only  in  a  little 
broadening  of  the  light-way  about  our  darkness-encircled 
lives. 

But  it  seems  to  me  that  so  far  as  concerns  the  individual 
manifestations  of  life,  we  may  and  we  must  differentiate 
clearly  between  the  love  of  one's  own  life  and  the  love  of 

*  Read  before  the  Wistar  Biological  Association,  Philadelphia,  Dec.  14, 
1894;  The  Philadelphia  Association  of  Kindergartners,  April  7,  1896,  etc. 

59 


6o  ,  MATERNAL  LOVE. 

the  life  of  one's  descendants.  The  cuckoo  bird  has  not 
enough  strength  of  the  maternal  instinct  to  build  a  nest  and 
incubate  her  own  eggs.  In  pigeons  the  male  has  a  far 
stronger  maternal  instinct  than  the  female,  and  in  some 
other  birds  the  male  has  resolutely  to  fight  for  and  defend 
the  eggs  from  the  destructive  habits  of  the  female.  Some 
animals  will  expose  themselves  to  danger,  even  die  most 
heroically  in  defending  their  young,  whilst  the  kangaroo 
mother,  it  is  said,  will,  when  hotly  pursued,  drop  one  or 
more  of  her  little  ones  to  lighten  her  load.  In  human  life, 
also,  as  we  well  know,  some  people  care  little  for  children, 
even  for  those  of  their  own  flesh  and  blood,  whilst  others 
will  sacrifice  their  own  lives  with  most  pathetic  heroism  for 
the  education  and  up-bringing  of  their  young. 

It  therefore  appears  to  me  plain  that  we  should  distinguish 
sharply  between  self-love  and  child-love.  Fundamentally, 
I  doubt  not,  they  proceed  from  one  ultimate  unity,  but  in 
biologic  manifestation  they  may  be  considered  as  two  dis- 
tinct exhibitions  or  phases  of  the  life-force.  One  is  devoted 
to  the  saving  of  the  individual  life,  the  other  to  the  per- 
petuation of  life  in  new  individuals.  It  is  perhaps  easy  to 
recognize  the  one  as  a  blind,  purposeless  force,  but  the  in- 
coming of  maternal  love  is  not  thus  to  be  accounted  for. 

I  have  been  forced  to  use  the  term  maternal  love  in 
default  of  a  better  one  to  express  an  unnamed  fact  or 
generalization  of  facts  much  larger  than  that  of  simple 
maternity.  In  many  animals  we  find  the  father  taking 
upon  himself  many  of  the  duties  usually  fulfilled  by  the 
mother,  and  at  all  times  the  purposes  and  results  of  the 
genesial  instinct  are  carried  out  by  an  intrinsically-inter- 
woven and  correspondent  series  of  duties  of  both  parents. 
Moreover,  if  we  descend  to  the  vegetable  world  the  eye 
that  is  trained  to  observe  facts  rather  than  the  accepted 
wordings  and  ideas  of  facts,  sees  everywhere  that  the  phe- 
nomena of  reproduction,  whether  in  anemophilous,  ento- 


MATERNAL   LOVE.  6l 

mophilous,  or  cryptogamic  orders,  are  really  asexual,  and 
the  plants  or  trees  themselves  have  no  fundamental  mor- 
phologic differences  of  structure  due  to  sexualism.  Indeed, 
the  so-called  "  male  "  and  "  female  "  organs  are  often  pro- 
duced by  the  same  plant,  and  even  by  the  same  twig  and 
the  same  flower. 

I  have  racked  my  brain  to  find  or  invent  a  term  that 
should  indicate  the  large  biologic  instinct  that  prepares  the 
organs  for  reproduction,  that  begets,  and  that  cares  for  the 
new  being  after  it  is  begotten,  whether  it  be  in  the  plant, 
the  animal,  or  the  human  world.  We  have  observation  of 
a  profound  and  unitary  force  that  directly  or  indirectly 
dominates  all  organic  life  during  almost  every  hour  of 
adult  existence.  In  the  plant-world  every  function  per- 
tains to  or  ends  in  seed-production,  and  just  as  a  father 
horn-bill  bird  reduces  himself  to  a  skeleton  and  utter  ex- 
haustion in  getting  and  carrying  food  to  his  mate  and 
nestlings,  just  as  a  human  parent  wears  life  out  in  heroic 
sacrifice  for  beloved  children,  just  exactly  so  will  a  tree 
under  like  disadvantageous  conditions  of  nutriment  com- 
mit suicide  in  the  production  of  seeds.  An  Indian  mother, 
in  order  to  rescue  her  baby  a  few  feet  away,  crawls  from 
behind  the  rock  protecting  her  from  the  guns  of  United 
States  soldiers.  She  knows  the  act  may  bring  a  bullet  in 
her  brain,  but  she  saves  the  baby  and  dies.  A  hen  in  a 
burning  barn  gathers  her  chickens  beneath  her  and  is 
burned  to  a  statuesque  cinder,  but  the  singed  chicks  are 
saved  by  the  dead  mother-body.  Is  it  not  the  same  divine 
love  that  filled  both  hearts  ?  Is  there  anything  else  in  the 
world  like  that  that  unites  and  holds  in  one  all  living 
things  ?  I  pity  one  who  does  not  see  in  such  things  the 
living  God  instantly  present  and  profoundly  interested  in 
carrying  on  his  biologic  world. 

There  is  one  silent,  subtle,  palpitant  pang  and  power 
of  love  that  thrills  through  all  organic  life,  that  murmurs 


6»  MATERNAL  LOVE. 

in  all  living  things,  and  swells  and  sings  its  unheard  song 
in  the  inmost  hearts  of  grass,  rose,  or  tree  ;  of  cow,  tiger, 
or  bird  ;  of  man,  maid,  or  mother, — all  straining  eye  and 
hope  toward  the  renewed  young  world  to  come.  It  is  this 
great  supernatural  force  for  which  I  would  find  a  name 
applicable  to  all  kinds  of  life  and  all  phases  of  its  function. 
In  its  purest  and  sweetest  quality  it  is  mother-love,  and  so 
in  order  to  give  it  a  naming  we  may  call  it  that.  But  I 
would  wish  that  the  connotation  may  not  be  forgotten  that 
it  is  also  father-love  as  well,  and  that  it  is  one  and  identical 
with  that  beautiful  power  that  makes  the  pigeon  turn  the 
eggs  upon  which  she  sits,  that  makes  the  grass  bloom,  and 
the  bee  to  seek  the  bloom. 

Possibly  some  of  the  more  "  scientific  "  of  you  were  a 
little  startled  when  I  used  the  word  "  supernatural."  It 
has  been  quite  the  fashion  among  a  certain  class  of  good 
folk  to  think  that  anything  named  scientific  must  not  have 
aught  to  do  with  such  foolish  old  used-up  words.  Indeed, 
it  is  supposed  that  science  is  wholly  given  to  explaining 
things  by  the  agency  of  physical  strains  and  stresses,  by 
reactions  and  reflexes,  mechanic  laws  and  natural  selections, 
struggles  for  existence,  and  all  that.  It  positively  makes 
some  people  purple  with  rage  if  one  dares  to  suggest  that 
there  may  be  such  a  thing  as  "  vital  force,"  or  "  soul,"  and 
a  hint  as  to  the  possible  existence  of  divinity,  either  in 
man  or  above  him,  elicits  a  pitying  contempt  of  you  that 
freezes  the  very  circumambient  air.  Well,  well !  These 
are  very  wise  people  indeed,  but  the  birds  will  sing  and 
build  nests  after  these  brethren  are  gone  to  their  agnostic 
heaven.  Even  they  have  their  uses  in  a  world  of  incon- 
gruous and  changeful  conditions  ! 

Science,  I  take  it,  is,  chiefest  of  all  things,  the  unpreju- 
diced, open-eyed  observation  and  systematization  of  facts ; 
the  construction  to  be  put  upon  them,  the  meaning  of  facts, 
is  another  matter,  and  differs  somewhat  according  to  the 


MATERNAL  LOVE.  63 

person  who  philosophizes.  Facts  are  very  patient,  un- 
complaining things  ;  very  pliant  and  compliant,  at  least  for 
a  time  ;  they  bear  a  deal  of  strange  philosophizing  over  and 
about  them,  very  meekly.  Some  people  have  been  known 
to  ignore  them  entirely,  and  yet  the  patient  facts  did  not 
worry  or  stop  existing.  And  those  who  thus  falsely  con- 
strue, or  who  thus  ignore,  are  quite  happy  also.  All  things 
have  their  compensations,  and  it  would  be  a  great  pity  if 
dogmatism  and  atheism  were  denied  the  compensation  at 
least  of  self-satisfaction. 

The  criticism  of  much  that  passes  under  the  name  of 
science,  and  the  fault  of  many  so-called  scientists,  is  the 
lack  of  sympathy.  It  is  only  a  keen  sense  of  love,  inter- 
est, and  fellow-feeling,  that  gives  that  alert  use  of  the 
imagination  that  leads  to  a  knowledge  of  the  truth.  The 
collator  of  facts  with  the  light  only  of  cold  reason  and 
intellect  will  never  find  lots  of  facts  in  the  world. 

It  begins  slowly  to  break,  even  upon  the  most  dry-as- 
dust  scientist,  that  there  are  some  things  not  dreamed 
of  in  the  evolution-philosophy,  and  the  suggestion  may 
not  bring  danger  to  the  suggester  that  the  fight  to 
death  for  the  supremacy  of  the  deer  herd  is  not  an  un- 
qualified necessity  from  the  axioms  of  the  "  struggle  for 
existence,"  nor  from  the  "  law  of  the  reaction  of  the  organ- 
ism to  the  environment."  If  the  "  environment "  of 
maidenly  beauty  in  Juliet  begets  "the  reaction"  in 
Romeo's  fancy  of  springtime  love,  whence,  it  may  be  asked, 
whence  Julia  and  her  beauty  ?  Or,  to  put  the  question  in 
another  form :  Does  not  the  stupidest  intelligence  catch 
hint  from  the  universality,  the  self-sacrifice,  and  the  power 
of  the  maternal  instinct  in  every  living  organism,  weed, 
insect,  or  human,  that  there  is  purpose  and  significance 
poured  down  into  these  beings  from  above,  not  growing 
out  of  them  from  any  need  or  logic  of  present  circumstance, 
or  from  any  demands  of  their  organisms,  considered   as 


64  MATERNAL   LOVE. 

single  and  self-sufficient  mechanisms  ?  Does  the  *'  environ- 
ment," or  any  so-called  "  law,"  or  any  so-called  explanation 
of  science,  show  why  these  billions  of  ever  renascent  beings 
should  spend  every  energy  of  their  lives  in  producing  and 
caring  for  new  beings  to  take  their  places  ?  Why  should 
we,  animals  and  men,  care  a  fig  whether  our  places  are 
taken  or  not?  The  sexual  and  maternal  instinct  holds 
masterly  reign  and  control  of  the  soul  of  every  biologic 
thing,  and  gives  the  instant  and  incontrovertible  lie  to  the 
libellous  chatter  that  all  is  selfishness,  all  is  mechanic, 
adamantine  law  and  purposeless  change  in  our  life  below. 
Without  the  supernatant  ocean  of  divine  life  and  love  behind 
it,  the  miraculous  tide  of  maternal  love  could  not  infill 
and  inthrill  the  tendrils  and  hearts  of  all  living  things,  any 
more  than,  on  a  thousand  miles  of  shore  without  the 
throbbing  gush  of  ocean-tide,  would  a  million  little  bays 
and  inlets  be  filled  and  bathed  with  flashing  wave  and 
liquid  life.  When  not  thus  full-flooded  with  the  tide  of 
love,  the  little  empty  estuaries  of  our  individual  lives  are 
occupied  in  panting  for  its  future  coming,  in  mourning  that 
it  does  not  come,  or  in  pensive  memories  of  its  past 
blessedness. 

But  possibly  the  hard-eyed  is  disgustedly  muttering  that 
this  is  all  poetry  and  nonsense.  Give  us,  he  is  probably 
saying,  give  us  something  scientific,  something  about 
"nature  red  with  tooth  and  claw;"  about  bones;  about 
protoplasm  ;  dying  planets  ;  the  pump-like  action  of  the 
heart ;  and  reflexes,  and  natural  selection,  and  the  survival 
of  the  fittest.  And  to  the  hard-eyed  I  might  make  answer 
that  the  truth  of  poetry  is  truer  than  the  truth  of  science ; 
that  teeth  and  claws  are  very  beautiful  structures  and  serve 
glorious  purposes ;  that  bones  were  made  by  Biologos,  and 
when  dead  are  excellent  objects  of  study  for  the  hard-eyed 
ones ;  that  none  of  us  know  anything  about  protoplasm 
except  that  it  is  living  and  mysterious ;  that  neither  of  us 


MATERNAL  LOVE.  65 

know  anything  about  dead  planets  ;  that  natural  selection 
is  half-lie,  half-truth,  and  that  the  survival  of  the  "  unfit "  is 
a  wonderful  fact. 

In  all  seriousness,  and  with  the  most  sober  scientific  reso- 
lution, I  contend  that  among  the  philosophies  and  sciences 
of  the  universe,  whether  idealistic  or  materialistic,  the  role 
of  maternal  love  is  either  unrecognized  entirely,  or  held  in 
too  light  estimation.  The  term,  "  struggle  for  existence," 
for  example,  has  been  much  talked  about,  and  has  been 
supposed  to  be  the  fundamental  explanation  of  the  phe- 
nomena of  organic  life,  and,  with  natural  selection,  to  fur- 
nish the  solution  of  the  riddles  of  organic  evolution.  But 
in  most  prosaic  literalness,  can  any  one  not  see  that  the 
distinguishing  and  determining  characteristics,  both  in  mor- 
phology and  physiology  have  been  more  dominated  by  the 
instant  and  ceaseless  influence  of  the  instincts  pertaining  to 
reproduction  ?  Can  any  one  doubt  that  the  progress  of 
evolution,  that  the  possibility  and  actuality  of  civilization 
have  been  instigated  by  the  upworking  and  the  outworking 
of  the  sexual  passion,  and  the  desire  to  find  houses  and 
food  and  place  for  the  little  ones?  It  is  maternal  love 
alone  that  has  produced  all  the  ideals  and  actualities  of 
Beauty  and  Esthetics  that  we  have ;  and  so  art,  novel, 
drama,  society,  and  ambition  are  the  creations  of  this 
mysterious  power. 

In  the  plant-world  every  phase  of  form  or  function  ex- 
ists as  a  product  of  the  strain  toward  inflorescence  and 
seed-production.  The  trunks  of  the  forest  monarchs  are 
the  props  of  the  flower  to  raise  it  high  in  air  where  the 
sun  may  reach  and  ripen,  and  where  the  winds  may  catch 
the  pollen  and  carry  it  to  waiting  mates.  Every  form  of 
leaf,  every  shape  of  growth,  every  coloration  and  build  of 
flower  pertain  to  the  one  end  and  aim  of  existence.  Think 
of  the  inexhaustible  ingenuity,  the  millionfold  device  for 
scattering  seeds.     Every  sort  of  balloon  conceivable  has 


66  MATERNAL   LOVE. 

been  made  by  the  cunning  mother-trees  for  wafting  their 
babes  to  far-away  nourishing  resting-places.  My  friend, 
Lafcadio  Hearn,  tells  me  of  the  ceiba  tree  in  the  West 
Indies,  which  bursting  its  pod  like  a  gun,  floats  its  white- 
winged  seeds  like  a  snow-storm  over  a  city,  and  when  they 
settle,  quickly  must  the  natives  clear  every  one  off  the 
roofs,  for  if  a  single  one  lodges  it  will  wreck  and  crush  the 
house  with  its  prolific  roots.  The  natives  think  the  tree 
has  personality,  like  animals  or  men,  and  if  you  wish  one 
of  the  trees  cut  down  you  must  make  your  wood-cutter 
drunk  in  order  to  get  him  to  do  it. 

Some  of  these  tree-mothers  surround  their  little  ones 
with  such  impervious  shells  that  they  float  and  drift  with 
tides  and  currents  for  weeks  and  months,  and  yet  retain 
their  life  and  growth-power  till  washed  ashore.  There  are 
hairs,  spines,  and  hard  shells  to  protect;  acid  juices  and 
poisons  to  sting  and  harrow ;  husks  and  hooks  and  spears 
to  cut  and  hurt ;  and  a  thousandfold  devices  for  getting 
the  better  of  the  curious  or  the  hungry.  Some  make 
hooks  and  claws  that  catch  any  passing  animal,  and  who, 
most  tormented,  as  all  boys  and  dogs  well  know,  must 
carry  them  far  and  wide.  But  the  birds,  too,  are  great 
helpers.  Darwin  found  that  a  clump  of  dried  mud  weigh- 
ing nine  grains,  from  the  leg  of  a  partridge,  and  which  had 
been  kept  for  three  years,  contained  seeds  from  which  he 
raised  eighty-two  distinct  plants.  Especially  in  eating  the 
seeds  for  the  sake  of  the  fruit,  the  seeds  preserving  their 
vitality,  the  birds,  as  also  animals,  are  great  helpers  in  the 
distribution  of  the  flora  of  the  world.  If  you  think  that  in 
nest-building  a  swallow  probably  travels  about  400  miles 
a  day,  and  in  migration  (also  for  love's  sake)  birds  travel 
straight  away  from  500  to  1000  miles  a  day,  we  see  how 
great  must  have  been  the  influence  of  birds  in  plant-distri- 
bution. A  curious  and  purely  accidental  function  of  the 
birds  is  the  chance  stocking  of  lakes  and  rivers  above  high 


MATERNAL  LOVE.  .67 

falls  with  fish,  which,  caught  below,  escape  from  claws  or 
bill  as  the  birds  seek  their  nests,  and  dropping  into  these 
high,  remote  waters,  people  them  with  their  kind ;  the  life 
within  and  about  the  water  in  such  localities  is  often  thus 
entirely  readjusted. 

But  I  wish  to  call  attention  to  a  fact,  our  familiarity  with 
which  leads,  as  usual,  to  a  forgetfulness  of  its  far-reaching 
importance  and  significance.  There  are  few  people,  even 
those  who  know  better,  who  do  not  mistake  a  seed's  stored- 
up  supply  for  the  seed  itself  The  seed  may  or  may  not 
be  nutritious,  but  even  if  it  is  so,  the  true  seed  constitutes 
the  infinitesimal  part  of  what  we  roughly  call  the  seed. 
The  great  bulk  of  every  grain  or  seed  is  composed  of  a 
stored-up  stock  of  concentrated  nutriment  clustered  about 
the  true  seed,  and  upon  which  it  feeds  whilst  springing  its 
rootlets  downward  and  its  leaflets  upward.  Thus  the 
bread,  the  potato,  the  apple  we  eat,  is  the  food  that  has 
been  cunningly  prepared  by  the  mother-plant  for  its  off- 
spring to  use  whilst  it  is  getting  its  own  organs  of  food- 
supply  ready  for  their  work.  The  yolk-sac  of  the  fish  or 
the  egg  of  the  bird  is  exactly  the  same  sort  of  a  contriv- 
ance. 

But  a  remarkable  deduction  is  to  be  made  from  all  this, 
a  deduction  that  is  perfectly  evident  when  we  think  of  it 
and  realize  it,  but  it  is  a  deduction  that  many  of  us  seldom 
or  never  make.  It  is  this  :  It  is  of  course,  self-evident,  that 
the  entire  animal  world,  including  the  human,  is  wholly 
dependent  upon  the  vegetable  for  food,  and  for  the  means 
of  continuing  its  existence.  Without  the  nutrient  material 
furnished  by  the  vegetable  kingdom,  the  animal  kingdom 
would  at  once  die  of  starvation.  But  now  consider  well 
the  implication  of  the  fact,  that  it  is  entirely  by  means  of 
nutriment  stored  up  by  plants  to  nourish  l/ieir  young,  that, 
as  it  were,  stolen  by  the  animal  world  enables  it  to  live. 
In  other  words,  it  is  that  great  cosmic,  regenerative  force. 


68  MATERNAL  LOVE. 

biologic  maternal  love,  that  has  been  ingenious  enough  to 
manufacture  concentrated  food  with  the  necessary  "  keep- 
ing "  qualities,  and  capable  of  supporting  the  life  of  plants 
and  of  animals.  Their  food  is  our  food ;  what  nourishes  the 
vegetable  children  nourishes  the  animal  children.  (Thus 
we  understand,  in  passing,  why  chloroform  and  other  drugs 
affect  plants  exactly  as  they  affect  us.)  Driven  by  the  spur 
of  solicitousness  and  love  for  its  young,  the  plant  has  found 
out  the  great  secret  of  food-formation.  In  this  connection 
is  it  necessary  to  add  a  word  as  to  the  food  of  man  derived 
from  the  animal  ?  The  flesh  of  animals  is  derived  directly 
from  grass  and  fruits  and  seeds,  and  this  muscular  tissue  is 
thus  itself  the  very  product  of  the  subtile,  silent  weaver  of 
life  we  have  called  maternal  love.  The  most  perfect  foods 
of  man,  milk  and  eggs,  products  of  double  distillation  in 
the  cellular  alembic  of  maternal  life,  this  wonderful  strained 
white  blood  and  living  flesh, — what  can  we  say  of  these 
works  of  the  divine  physiologic  chemist?  If  we  have 
grateful  hearts  and  seeing  minds,  we  can  only  thank  and 
recognize  the  hand  that  fashioned  and  that  reaches  them 
to  us,  as  the  hand  of  God,  who  keeps  up  the  repeopling 
of  the  world,  and  hence,  who  sees  well  to  it  that  his  little 
ones  should  be  fed. 

Although  perhaps  logically,  and  you  will  say  also  rhe- 
torically out  of  place,  I  cannot  forbear  at  this  point  to 
interject  a  word  as  to  our  care  and  treatment  of  hens  and 
cows.  Please  do  not  smile  at  the  sudden  transition.  When 
seen  with  the  eyes  of  science,  or  with  those  of  pure  sym- 
pathy, there  is  nothing  about  living  things  that  is  not  beau- 
tiful and  winning  and  dignified.  This  great  question  of  the 
willing  obedience,  loyalty,  and  service  of  the  animal  world 
to  the  human  world,  constantly  arouses  in  sensitive  hearts 
a  multitude  of  painful  thoughts.  From  every  prolific  grain 
or  fruit,  from  dog  and  horse,  especially  from  every  maternal 
organism  there  run  back  to  the  divine  center  reins  of  guid- 


MATERNAL   LOVE.  69 

ance  and  control  which  ensure  loyalty,  obedience,  and  ser- 
vice to  a  common  "  dim,  far-off,  unseen  event."  Else  why 
the  continued  giving  of  milk  when  the  calf  has  gone, 
why  the  continuous  egg-production  by  the  nonincubating 
mother  ?  Animals  are  not  so  stupid  as  that !  Dairy- 
folk  well  know  the  difficulty  of  getting  cows  to  "  give 
down  "  when  they  are  maltreated,  when  the  food  is  not 
good,  or  when  deprived  of  their  calves.  Livingstone 
speaks  of  the  African  cows  as  especially  "  bad "  in  this 
respect,  and  that  only  "  milk-fever  "  will  compel  them  to 
give  their  milk.  The  milkers  in  the  Scottish  highlands 
used  to  have  peculiar  songs  which  made  their  cows 
generous.  The  hen  and  the  cow  are  the  most  loyal  of 
man's  helpers  and  purveyors,  and  yet  it  is  grievously 
shocking  how  ungrateful  we  are  to  them.  We  are  only 
beginning  to  learn  that  our  self-interest  commands  us  to 
care  for  cows  better,  but  even  now  their  suffering  from 
cold,  the  carelessness  of  farmers  as  to  their  food  and  water, 
the  filth  in  which  they  live,  is  a  disgrace  both  to  our  selfish- 
ness and  to  our  humanity.  If  human  mothers  would  only 
think  of  what  these  other  mothers  endure  and  how  they 
are  abused,  there  would  be  some  hope  that  the  milk  given 
human  babes  would  soon  be  purer,  freer  from  disease,  and 
yielded  by  a  healthier  and  happier  animal.  It  is  known 
that  violent  emotion  poisons  human  milk,  why  also  may 
not  the  beatings  and  abuse  of  the  cow  change  her  milk 
harmfully?  Babies,  human  and  canine,  have  died  in  con- 
vulsions just  after  nursing  when  the  mother  had  just  been 
furious  with  anger  or  emotion.  It  may  be  confidently 
stated  that,  fed,  housed  and  treated,  as  cows  should  be,  and 
the  milk  cared  for  as  it  should  be,  there  would  be  little 
enough  profit  to  the  dairyman  if  milk  were  furnished  by 
him  at  twenty  cents  a  quart.  But  it  will  probably  require 
the  scourges  of  tuberculosis  and  various  diseases  to  teach 
us  the  little  lesson  that  the  commonest  human  sympathy 


7©  MATERNAL  LOVE. 

should  long  ago  have  taught.     The  same  thought  runs  out 
as  regards  our  egg-supply. 

Let  me  extend  my  parenthesis  by  a  word  or  two  of  ad- 
vice as  to  teaching  children  sympathy  for  and  fellow-feel- 
ing with  animals.  Enlist  every  child's  interest  in  domestic 
pets  and  make  young  naturalists  of  them  as  soon  as  possi- 
ble. But  guard  against  making  them  mere  collectors  of 
dead  animals.  It  is  living  not  dead  biology  that  quickens 
the  sensibilities  and  deepens  the  child's  conception  of  the 
world.  Let  him  learn  physiology  rather  than  anatomy, 
psychology  rather  than  neurology.  What  is  needed  is  the 
lightning-like  glance  of  intellectualized  sympathy  (at  least 
the  sympathy)  flashed  among  the  play  and  functions  and 
relations  of  all  palpitant  life.  Trained  scientists  are  better 
museum-makers  than  children.  Don't  let  the  child  kill 
and  delude  himself  that  that  is  science  or  biology.  So 
soon  as  a  child  understands  anything  it  can  understand  the 
pretty  story  of  Mohammed  cutting  off  the  flaps  of  his  coat 
in  order  not  to  disturb  his  kitten  sleeping  upon  it.  The 
animal  child  and  the  human  child  have  a  vast  deal  in 
common.  There  is  nothing  humanity  needs  more  than  to 
learn  the  duty  of  kindness  and  sympathy  for  all  animal  life. 
Have  a  multiplicity  of  domestic  pets.  Let  children  almost 
live  in  the  Zoological  Gardens.  Beware  of  a  person  who 
doesn't  like  animals ;  something  is  deeply  wrong  with  such 
a  person.  There  are  a  dozen  or  two  books  all  children 
should  read  as  early  as  they  can  understand  them.  Such 
are  Oswald's  Summerland  and  Zoological  Sketches ;  Mrs. 
Martin's  Life  on  an  Ostrich  Farm  ;  Nicols'  Zoological  Notes  ; 
Taylor's  The  Sagacity  and  Morality  of  Plants  ;  Olive  Thorne 
Miller's  books,  and  those  of  Burroughs,  perhaps ;  Hudson's 
splendid  The  Naturalist  in  La  Plata ;  Wilson's  Studies  in 
Life  and  Sense  ;  and,  above  all,  the  great  work  of  Kipling, 
Beast  and  Man  in  India  ;  and  the  great  work  of  the  greater 
son,  Rudyard,  The  Ju7igle  Book,  superb  and  beyond  praise. 


MATERNAL   LOVE.  71 

Let  Lubbock  and  Romanes  wait  for  older  heads.  It  is  a 
strange  family  that  do  not  think  their  cat  and  dog  the  most 
remarkable  and  lovable  cat  and  dog  in  the  world.  Every 
pet  will  show  animal  spirit  struggling  toward  the  human, 
dumbly  begging  for  human  sympathy  and  help  ;  and,  too, 
there  frequently  occur  phenomena  that  make  us  shiver 
as  if  we  should  look  into  the  sky  and  see  great  divine  eyes 
beckoning  ;  facts  that  point  to  the  unity  of  all  life,  infallible 
signs  of  the  dependence  of  the  body  upon  spirit, — soul  and 
sentiment  penetrating  sense  and  flesh  like  hidden  elec- 
tricity. The  anesthetics  we  use  in  surgery  paralyze  plant- 
metabolism  and  action,  as,  e.g.^  in  the  sensitive  plant;  and 
snake  poison  retards  the  germination  of  seeds.  A  friend 
of  mine  was  kept  awake  nearly  all  night  by  some  strange 
noise  at  the  window.  A  dead  cuckoo  told  the  story  of  an 
endeavor  to  reach  the  supposed  mate  of  the  "  cuckoo 
clock."  I  went  once  a  long  distance  to  see  a  motherless 
hen  which  had  driven  the  old  cat  away  and  was  brooding 
over  a  lot  of  kittens,  very  watchful,  very  happy,  and  very 
proud.  Mrs.  Martin  tells  a  similar  story  of  the  great 
Chakar  playing  the  role  of  a  most  excellent  foster-mother 
to  a  half  hundred  tiny  puff-balls  of  incubator  chicks, 
guarding,  watching,  careful  not  to  put  his  great  feet  on 
them,  etc.  A  childless  dog  tried  to  steal  some  little 
puppies,  but  failing,  took  a  toy  dog  made  of  rubber  and 
tried  to  nurse  it,  licked  and  coddled  it  tenderly  for  a  long 
time.  An  English  physician  describes  the  mother-zeal  of 
a  Maltese  cat,  a  strict  monogamist,  faithful  even  in  widow- 
hood. But  if  any  of  the  other  cats  had  kittens  she  would 
manage  to  get  some  of  them,  and  in  a  few  hours  she  had 
an  abundant  supply  of  milk  for  them.  The  dependence  of 
this  milk-secretion  upon  pure  mother-love  began  in  this 
wise  :  At  seven  years  of  age  she  witnessed  an  accident  to 
a  little  kitten  just  weaned,  to  which  she  had  previously  had 
a  great  aversion.     This  kitten  fell,  and  hurting  itself,  cried 


Ji  MATERNAL   LOVE. 

piteously.  At  once  dislike  disappeared ;  "Zettie"  ran  to 
it,  caressed  it,  and  carried  it  upstairs.  At  this  time  she  had 
been  a  widow  for  fourteen  months,  but  she  now  began 
nursing  the  little  orphan  and  continued  to  do  so  for  two 
months.  I  have  elsewhere  related  an  exactly  similar  fact, 
except  that  it  was  a  little  dog,  long  childless,  or  puppyless 
if  you  please,  that  nursed  a  lost  kitten.  Numerous  instances 
are  on  record  of  men  having  an  ample  milk-secretion  and 
nursing  babes.  Wagtails  use  the  backs  of  friendly  stronger 
birds  upon  which  they  ride  in  long  migrations.  Elephants 
and  men  are  the  only  animals  that  shed  tears  in  weeping. 
Cows  have  been  known  to  be  so  severely  homesick  that  to 
save  their  lives  they  had  to  be  returned  to  the  old  home. 
Dogs  have  returned  home  over  800  miles  of  unknown 
country ;  even  when  chloroformed  it  makes  no  difference 
in  their  return.  A  crow  with  clipped  wings  left  his  thiev- 
ing new  master  and  walked  four  miles  through  the  snow  to 
the  old  master.  Dogs,  monkeys,  birds,  and  ducks  have 
been  known  to  die  of  a  "  broken  heart,"  from  loss  of  young, 
loss  of  their  masters,  etc.  Ruskin  tells  the  story  of  a  race- 
horse that  took  sick  and  only  got  well  when  his  pet  kitten 
was  telegraphed  for  and  put  in  his  stall.  He  then  won  the 
race !  A  mother  monkey,  the  elder  Kipling  says,  will 
carry  with  her  for  weeks  the  dried  and  dead  body  of  her 
little  one,  fondling  and  petting  it  as  if  alive.  It  is  said  that 
if  the  male  bird  of  Paradise  is  killed  the  female  will  continue 
to  sit  upon  her  eggs  until  she  starves  to  death. 

I  have  said  that  sympathy  with  the  whole  world  of  living 
things  is  the  prime  requisite  of  learning  truth.  This  is  true 
whether  the  truth  be  scientific,  philosophic,  or  religious. 
It  is  especially  so  with  children.  The  recognition  of  the 
maternal  instinct  in  all  other  living  things  tells  the  young 
the  nature  of  the  world  in  which  we  live  more  than  all  the 
books  and  laboratories  in  the  world.  Take  up  the  ques- 
tion of  the  growth  and  relative  degrees  of  intelligence  in 


MATERNAL  LOVE.  73 

animals.  Guided  by  sympathy  and  a  careful  observation 
of  facts  we  can  show  the  child  clearly  on  what  biologic 
intelligence  depends.  Careful  scrutiny  shows  that  all  vege- 
tables and  animals  have  an  infinite  wealth  of  what  may  be 
called  unconscious  intelligence  struggling  for  outlet. 
Every  living  thing,  in  its  form,  color,  and  function,  is  a 
palimpsest,  behind  the  later  bolder  writing  of  which  we  see 
dimly  the  deeper,  richer  characters  and  messages  of  a  more 
ancient  truth.  The  intelligent  energy  that  constitutes  the 
essential  being  of  all  things  is  the  same  in  all,  but  is  pre- 
vented from  coming  to  individual  expression  by  the  peculi- 
arities of  organization  and  the  necessities  of  life.  The 
greater,  the  infinitely  greater  part  of  the  intelligence  of  our 
being,  exists  unconsciously,  as  cellular  or  physiologic  in- 
telligence. Out  of  this  great  mine  of  unconscious  wisdom 
we  quarry  rich  gems  of  our  individual,  willed,  or  conscious 
intelligence,  and  the  progress  of  all  personality  as  of  all 
civilization  consists  in  adopting  the  intelligence  of  the 
unconscious  as  that  of  our  personal  wills.  The  work  of 
all  true  life  and  evolution  is  to  transform  cellular  or  physio- 
logic wisdom  and  morality  into  conscious  willed  intelli- 
gence and  morality. 

Look  sharply  at  the  plant-world.  Plants  are  prevented 
from  showing  individual  intelligence  by  the  fact  that  they 
have  no  powers  of  locomotion,  and  therefore  do  not  need 
a  centralized  nervous  system  that  is  the  agent  of  bringing 
cellular  consciousness  to  personal  consciousness.  But  they 
choose,  they  show  emotions,  likes  and  dislikes,  and  they 
have  evident  joys  and  sorrows.  If  you  don't  think  so  it  is 
not  the  fault  of  the  plant.  It  sees  more  without  eyes  than 
you  do  with  them  ! 

In  the  animal  world  the  conditions  permitting  the  devel- 
opment and  showing  of  intelligence  depend  upon — 

I.  The  Sensitiveness  and  Amplitude  of  Sensitive 
Surface  Exposed  to  the  External  ^A(^o^ld. — This  is  a 
7 


74  MATERNAL  LOVE. 

great  and  beautiful  law,  a  key  that  unlocks  thousands  of 
mysteries  for  us.  The  interposition  of  hoofs  between  the 
feet  and  the  ground  is  the  most  noticeable  illustration. 
The  hard  hoof  prevents  knowledge  of  the  ground,  and  the 
perceptions  are  not  sharpened.  All  hard-footed  animals 
are,  as  a  rule,  less  intelligent  than  soft-footed  animals.  The 
possession  of  other  sharpened  senses  may  help  to  compen- 
sate, however.  The  mobile  lip  of  the  horse  helps  him,  and 
the  knowledge  of  his  own  body  gained  by  the  sensitive  tail 
also  aids,  as  well  as  his  association  with  man.  The  hog's 
nose  and  rooting  propensities  account  for  its  relative  intelli- 
gence over  the  sheep  and  other  hard-footed  brothers.  The 
soft  feet  of  birds  is  supplemented  by  the  bill  and  the  tongue, 
and  especially  by  the  wings.  The  mobile  lips  of  the  dog, 
his  tongue,  his  expressive  tail,  together  with  his  associa- 
tion with  man  have  aided  his  soft  sensitive  feet  to  develop 
his  intelligence  greatly.  The  same  may  be  said  of  the  cat. 
But,  it  is  the  trunk  of  the  elephant,  one  of  the  most  re- 
markable physiologic  structures  in  the  world,  that  has 
made  this  wonderful  animal  the  most  intelligent  of  all, 
except  the  monkey,  who  has  learned  to  use  his  front  feet  as 
hands,  and  thus  (the  prehensile  tail  and  mode  of  life  aid- 
ing), of  all  animals  he  has  been  put  in  the  most  intimate 
connection  with  the  world. 

The  second  great  condition  of  expression  of  animal  in- 
telligence relates  to  the  extent  of  the  external  world  thus 
known.  The  lowest  degree,  life  in  one  element  alone, 
will  give  very  limited  knowledge,  as,  e.  g.,  of  the  earth 
alone,  as  in  animals  that  live  in  the  ground  deprived  of  the 
light.  But  even  here  the  contact  of  the  whole  body  with 
the  earth  greatly  enhances  the  possibilities  of  sensitive- 
ness and  recompenses  the  mole,  for  instance,  for  his  little 
range  of  media.  Fish  are  relatively  stupid  because  of  the 
single  medium  they  know,  but  they  have  a  large  and  sen- 
sitive surface  in  the  fin  and  tail  and  mouth,  to  compensate. 


MATERNAL  LOVE.  75 

They  have  also  good  eyes.  They  have,  however,  no  hear- 
ing as  we  know  it,  though  they  have  a  perception  of  vibra- 
tions and  jars. 

The  space  even  in  one  medium  over  which  locomotion  ex- 
tends also  conditions  the  intelligence.  Wide-roaming,  easily- 
moving  animals  are  smarter  than  stay-at-homes.  Locomo- 
tion calls  for  vision,  and  vision  is  the  very  sine  qua  non  of 
conscious  intelligence,  or  that  under  the  control  of  the  will. 
Some  animals  that  move  about  freely  when  young,  with 
eyes  and  other  important  organs,  lose  their  eyes  and  senses 
when  they  attach  themselves  to  one  spot  and  become  plant- 
like in  habits. 

Those  animals  which  know  the  air  alone  are  also  handi- 
capped. But  the  bat  has  developed  such  a  sensitiveness 
of  his  interdigital  membranes  that  he  detects  the  relative 
density  of  the  air  near  objects  by  this  means  alone,  and  is 
thus  able,  though  blind  or  in  the  dark,  to  avoid  objects 
perfectly. 

Most  air-livers  have  soft,  sensitive  feet,  as  well  as  the 
wonderful  wings,  so  that  they  know  two  media,  the  air,  and 
such  solid  objects  as  trees,  the  ground,  etc.  The  greater 
number  of  these  media  known,  the  greater  the  intelligence, 
other  things  being  equal.  So  that  amphibious  birds,  those 
also  that  swim  as  well  as  fly,  are  relatively  nobler  than 
those  that  fly  alone.  If  they  have  good  walking  powers 
on  land,  this  also  helps. 

3.  The  Development  of  Intellect  also  Depends  on 
the  Relative  Development  of  the  Senses. — Fishes  are 
put  to  a  disadvantage  by  a  lack  of  the  senses  of  hearing 
and  of  smell.  Snakes  are  also  without  the  sense  of  hear- 
ing, but  their  long,  lithe,  soft  bodies  help  them  to  know  the 
ground,  and  by  a  peculiar  structure  of  the  ribs  and  scales 
each  scale  becomes  almost  afoot, so  that  getting  a  hundred 
little  leverages  on  inequalities,  e.  g.,  of  bark,  some  of 
them  can  crawl  slowly  up  an  almost  perpendicular  surface. 


76  MATERNAL   LOVE. 

Deer  and  dogs  have  an  astounding  development  of  the 
sense  of  smell  which  helps  them  greatly,  as  a  hundred 
hunters'  stories  tell  us. 

4.  Length  of  Life  is  also  a  noteworthy  condition  of 
mental  development.  The  elephant  with  its  hundred  years 
of  life,  has  a  great  advantage  in  learning  and  remembering 
experiences  over  his  less  long-living  relatives.  Things 
that  live  but  for  an  hour  or  a  day  know  but  one  instinct. 

5.  Association  with  Man  is  lastly  a  powerful  helper  of 
intelligence.  Our  domestic  animals  imitate  and  learn  of 
us  with  avidity.  Some  dogs  have  learned  to  under- 
stand ordinary  conversation.  Chickens  are  slow  in  this 
respect,  because  their  feet  are  hard,  they  have  lost  the 
power  of  flying,  etc. 

Thus,  what  an  understanding  of  the  world  we  get  by 
sympathetic  observation  of  life !  Universal  cellular  intel- 
ligence is  aided  in  becoming  specifically  manifest,  or  in 
becoming  the  instrument  of  the  individual  will,  by  the  sen- 
sitiveness and  amplitude  of  the  bodily  exposure  to  contact 
with  the  world  thus  sensed ;  by  the  relative  development 
of  other  senses;  by  length  of  life ;  and  by  association  with 
man. 

But  it  is  especially  the  Strength  and  Exercise  of  the 
Maternal  Instinct,  which  besides  governing  the  uncon- 
scious development,  and  being  one  of  the  most  fundamental 
of  the  conditions  of  intelligence,  is  specifically  a  powerful 
factor  in  the  production  of  the  intelligence  of  the  genus 
and  of  the  individual.  One  of  the  stupidest  of  animals, 
whose  feet  are  hard,  whose  lips  and  tail  are  in  this  respect 
useless,  the  sheep,  may  be  spurred  to  ingenuity  by  love,  as 
by  no  other  thing.  A  patient  told  me  of  a  mother  sheep 
which  had  no  milk  for  her  little  one.  It  only  needed  one 
experience  to  teach  her,  when  her  lamb  bleated  with  hun- 
ger, to  run  with  the  little  one  headlong  to  the  house,  a  long 
distance  away,  where  it  was  fed  "  by  hand  "  by  the  kind- 


MATERNAL  LOVE.  77 

hearted  human  sisters.  Tropical  cats  know  all  about  artifi- 
cial respiration.  A  friend  saw  a  cat  take  its  drowned 
kitten  and  roll  it  up  hill,  the  fore-paws  alternately  squeez- 
ing the  lungs  at  every  step;  in  about  half  an  hour  of  almost 
frenzied  labor  the  kitten  was  resuscitated. 

Literature  is  filled  with  the  devices  and  marvelous 
proofs  of  ingenuity  of  animal  parents  in  raising  and  defend- 
ing their  young.  The  feigning  of  death  of  opossums, 
snakes,  and  birds;  the  simulation  of  wounds,  the  trailing  of 
wings,  the  building  of  nest  over  nest  by  the  summer  yellow 
bird  to  prevent  the  incubation  of  the  egg  of  the  shameless 
cuckoo,  the  hiding  of  snakes  under  the  mother's  coils  or 
down  her  throat,  the  thousand  protective  devices  and  in- 
genuities— all  show  how  strong  a  force  is  maternal  love  in 
the  development  of  the  intelligence.  Opossums  leave  the 
marsupial  pouch  early,  and  clinging  to  the  mother  learn 
many  things  of  the  world  very  early.  Nicols  tells  a  comi- 
cal story  of  a  young  kaola  which  was  taken  by  a  cat  to 
nurse  with  her  own  kittens.  But  the  kaola  had  inherited 
the  habit  of  riding  about  on  its  mother's  back,  a  habit  that 
the  pussy  foster-mother  didn't  like  at  all.  But  she  was  very 
patient  about  it  all.  A  writer  in  Science,  some  time  ago, 
tells  of  the  curiosity  of  a  monkey,  which  in  hunting 
other  game  on  an  opossum  in  his  cage,  discovered  the 
wonderful  pouch  full  of  opossum  babies,  and  examined 
them  with  tenderness  but  profound  curiosity.  Nicols  tells 
of  the  laughable  attempt  of  a  little  kangaroo  to  find  the 
pouch  of  its  dog  foster-mother. 

It  is  frightful  to  think  of  the  evil  that  results  from  the 
dissociation  and  alienation  of  humanity  from  animals,  or, 
what  is  worse,  from  the  nasty  habit  of  considering  them  as 
soulless  slaves  to  be  used,  or  as  targets  to  be  shot  at. 
When  I  see  some  savage  human  female  riding  about  the 
streets  behind  horses  whose  necks  are  suffering  from  infer- 
nal check-reins,  and  whose  eyes  are  rubbed  sore  by  stupid 


78  MATERNAL  LOVE. 

blinders,  driven  by  a  fool  who  knows  nothing  of  horse- 
character,  I  feel  very  much  like  wishing  to  pull  that  crea- 
ture out  of  her  cushions,  cut  off  her  hair,  stick  a  bit  in  her 
mouth,  and  yank  her  head  back  in  the  same  way  as  she 
has  done  with  her  horses.  What  else  but  having  been 
brought  up  with  animals  and  thus  learning  how  lovable 
they  are,  will  ever  eradicate  out  of  fiendish  humans  the 
idea  that  when  they  have  an  hour  or  a  day  to  spare  from 
their  work  of  plundering  their  fellow-men  they  must  spend 
it  in  murdering  some  animal.  Let's  go  out  and  kill  some- 
thing !  That  is  sport !  And,  of  course,  woman  will  never 
permit  men  to  be  worse  than  she  can  be,  and  so  goes  on 
the  insane  and  awful  destruction  of  our  birds,  of  beautiful 
winged  life  all  over  the  globe.  Beware  of  a  woman  with  a 
bird  on  her  hat ! 

What  genuine  and  delightful  happiness  these  little  beings 
give  us  !  I  shall  always  look  back  to  the  days  when  my 
dog  and  I  played  hide-and-seek  in  the  woods  for  hours 
together,  and  I  regret  nothing  more  than  the  fact  that  I 
was  unjust  or  harsh  to  him  once  or  twice.  Knowledge  and 
sympathetic  study  of  animals  teaches  one  more  and  truer 
psychology  than  all  the  books  can  do,  because  in  their 
artlessness  they  show  the  secret  springs  of  motive,  and  of 
evolution,  and  form  a  mirror  wherein  one  may  see  himself 
reflected. 

Just  one  glimpse  of  the  "  one  touch  of  nature  which 
makes  the  whole  world  kin."  Does  this  anecdote  by  Kip- 
ling Sr.,  not  recall  the  relations  of  some  human  couples  we 
have  known  ? 

**  One  morning  there  came  a  monkey  chieftain,  weak  and  limp- 
ing, having  evidently  been  worsted  in  a  severe  fight  with  another 
of  his  own  kind.  One  hand  hung  powerless,  his  face  and  eyes 
bore  terrible  traces  of  battle,  and  he  hirpled  slowly  along  with  a 
pathetic  air  of  suffering,  supporting  himself  on  the  shoulder  of  a 


MATERNAL  LOVE.  79 

female,  a  wife,  the  only  member  of  his  clan  who  had  remained 
faithful  to  him  after  his  defeat.  We  threw  them  bread  and 
raisins,  and  the  wounded  warrior  carefully  stowed  the  greater 
part  away  in  his  cheek-pouch.  The  faithful  wife,  seeing  her 
opportunity,  sprang  on  him,  holding  fast  his  one  sound  hand, 
and  opening  his  mouth  she  deftly  scooped  out  the  store  of  raisins ; 
then  she  sat  and  ate  them  very  calmly  at  a  safe  distance,  while 
he  mowed  and  chattered  in  impotent  rage.  He  knew  that  with- 
out her  help  he  could  not  reach  home,  and  was  fain  to  wait  with 
what  patience  he  might  till  the  raisins  were  finished.  It  was  a 
sad  sight,  but,  like  more  sad  sights,  touched  with  the  light  of 
comedy.  This  was  probably  her  first  chance  of  disobedience  or 
of  self-assertion  in  her  whole  life,  and  I  am  afraid  she  thoroughly 
enjoyed  it.  Then  she  led  him  away,  possibly  to  teach  him  more 
salutary  lessons  of  this  modern  and  *  advanced  '  sort,  so  that  at 
the  last  he  would  go  to  another  life  with  a  meek  and  chastened 
soul." 

We  have  seen  that  the  absolute  condition  of  the  existence 
of  the  human  and  animal  world  depends  instantly  and  con- 
tinuously upon  the  secret  of  the  fabrication  and  storing  of 
food  about  her  seed-children,  by  the  Chemist-Mother  of  the 
plant-world.  The  existence  of  the  living  world  depends 
then  upon  mother-love  and  upon  mother-foresight  for  food, 
the  primal  condition  of  life-perpetuation. 

But  not  only  for  food,  but  for  the  feeding  itself.  The 
lambent  flame  of  limpid  love  that  burns  in  the  startled 
wondrous  mother-eye  of  cow,  or  dog,  or  human  mother,  as 
she  gazes  down  upon  her  little  nursling,  is  perhaps  the  most 
revelatory  thing  in  the  world.  All  the  world  loves  a 
mother,  and  all  mothers,  human  or  animal,  are  sisters.  A 
common  passion  links  and  unifies  them  all  and  makes  them 
alike  holy,  all  commissioned  by  another  mother-heart  to  be 
sharers  in  a  divine  duty.  Step  into  a  pigeon  loft.  There 
is  one  bird  which  a  few  hours  ago  was  liberated  250  miles 
out  at  sea.     He  was  taken  there  in  a  closed  basket.     He 


8o  MATERNAL  LOVE. 

knew  nothing  of  compasses,  of  astronomy,  or  of  steamers 
and  oceans,  but  when  the  basket-cover  was  raised,  by  the 
guidance  of  an  "  instinct  "  the  nature  or  mechanism  of 
which  we  know  utterly  nothing,  he  darted  toward  home, 
toward  the  place  of  his  duties  as  monogamous  husband  and 
as  caretaker  of  the  young.  Without  indecision  or  varying 
he  came  straight  to  his  home  over  hundreds  of  miles  of 
water,  where  no  landmarks  existed.  At  once  he  begins  his 
domestic  duty  of  driving  and  tormenting  his  wife  toward 
the  nest.  The  imperious  fellow  will  brook  no  shilly-shally- 
ing. Eggs  must  be  laid  !  Voila  tout!  When  there  are 
enough  of  them  they  must  be  hatched,  which  on  occasion 
he  will  help  to  do,  turning  the  eggs  regularly,  bringing  the 
outside  ones  toward  the  center,  etc.,  so  that  all  the  children 
shall  be  born  together.  When  the  young  are  there  he  has 
an  abundance  of  "  soft  food  "  macerated,  in  his  crop,  a  kind 
of  bird-milk,  ready  to  feed  them  until  their  digestive 
powers  are  ready  for  common  food.  The  mother  may  now 
go  about  her  business  of  getting  ready  for  more  eggs,  and 
the  mother-father  attends  to  the  babies,  teaching  them  by 
and  by  where  to  go  for  food,  etc.,  etc.  Who  taught  the 
mother  to  stand  over  the  already  laid  eggs  instead  of  sitting 
on  them,  before  the  time  of  incubation  of  the  whole  lot 
should  begin  ?  Who  formed  each  wondrous  t.^'g  with  such 
provisions  that  the  "  white  "  or  food  of  the  young  unhatched 
chick  should  surround  the  yolk,  and  again  the  yolk  about 
the  germinal  vesicle,  and  about  all  the  encasing,  protecting 
shell,  with  pores  or  breathing  spaces  through  it  for  the 
chick's  supply  of  air  ? 

**  The  section  of  an  egg  proceeding  from  the  outside  to  the 
center,  shows,  first,  an  outer  layer  of  calcareous  matter  con- 
taining the  coloring  pigment,  then  the  inner  layer,  both  being 
Tjenetrated  by  minute  canals  for  the  admission  of  air  when  the 
shell  is  dry.     Next  within  lies  the  shell  membrane,  which  is 


MATERNAL  LOVE.  8i 

separated  at  the  larger  end  of  the  egg  into  a  double  layer,  and 
includes  a  small  air-space,  which  increases  in  size  as  the  egg 
grows  stale  and  becomes  unfit  for  incubation.  Immediately  in 
contact  with  the  shell  membrane  is  the  albumen,  or  white 
viscous  fluid,  and  again  within  that  the  vitellus,  or  yolk,  con- 
taining the  germ  enclosed  in  its  own  membrane,  and  lighter 
than  the  albumen.  The  difference  in  specific  gravity  between 
the  yolk  and  white  is  made,  by  a  singular  contrivance,  to  pro- 
mote the  development  of  the  germ  most  effectually.  From 
each  side  of  the  yolk  in  the  direction  of  the  long  axis  of  the 
^gg,  proceeds  a  cord  of  condensed  albumen  extending  towards, 
but  not  meeting,  the  end  of  the  egg,  and  vulgarly  called  *  the 
tread,'  under  the  erroneous  impression  that  it  represents  the 
influence  of  the  male.  Between  those  cords, — one  passing 
toward  the  large  and  the  other  toward  the  small  end  of  the 
egg — the  yolk  is,  as  it  were,  slung  in  the  albumen.  Thus  while 
the  germinal  vesicle  on  the  outside  of  the  yolk  is  prevented 
from  coming  into  actual  contact  with  the  interior  of  the  shell 
by  its  '  moorings '  in  the  denser  substance  of  the  albumen, 
the  lightness  of  the  yolk  determines  it  to  float  toward  the 
surface,  and  the  cords  allow  it  to  go  just  so  far  as  is  sufficient 
to  keep  the  germ  spot  always  nearer  the  upper  side  of  the  egg, 
whichever  way  it  may  be  turned  on  its  axis.  Consequently, 
that  part  of  the  yolk  where  the  most  vital  part  is  situated 
remains,  in  all  circumstances,  nearest  the  source  of  heat,  the 
mother's  body." 

Let  me  also  sketch  for  you  the  cares  of  another  mother. 
This  mother,  though  a  vertebrate,  has  had  to  develop  the 
hind  legs  and  arches  of  the  pelvic  bones  in  such  a  way  that 
the  young  have  to  be  born  very  early,  so  early  indeed  that 
there  is  no  placental  connection  with  the  mother,  no  blood- 
feeding  of  the  kangaroo  baby  before  its  birth.  When  born, 
indeed,  it  is  merely  an  &^^,  without  a  shell,  an  inch  long,  a 
helpless  bit  of  fragile  protoplasm.  Only  a  kangaroo  mother 
could  care  for  such  a  baby.  This  she  does  by  sticking  it  in 
a  wonderful  pouch  of  skin  beneath  her  body,  and  how  this 


82  MATERNAL   LOVE. 

is  done,  and  how  the  nipple  is  got  into  the  mouth  and  clear 
down  the  throat  into  the  stomach  of  the  unformed,  muscle- 
less,  motionless  bundle,  are  mysteries  of  kangaroo  mother- 
hood. What  is  still  more  wonderful  is,  however,  under- 
stood. Without  formed  muscles  there  can  be  no  suckling, 
but  nature  is,  as  always,  equal  to  the  emergency.  The 
muscles  are  in  the  mother's  breasts,  and  she  can  extrude  the 
milk  at  will.  Another  bit  of  "  special  design"  is  required 
by  the  fact  that  as  the  kangaroo  babies  grow  (the  mother 
moving  by  jumps,  as  all  know)  their  weight  would  burst  the 
marsupial  pouch  if  it  were  not  braced  and  supported  by 
the  marsupial  bones  which  grow  out  beneath  it,  and  are 
thought  to  be  ossified  tendons  of  the  external  oblique 
muscles. 

The  pursuit  of  food  for  mate  and  little  ones  is,  as  we 
have  seen,  a  more  subtile  but  active  cause  of  mental  growth. 
The  swifts  in  building  their  nests  (the  edible  birds'  nests  of 
the  Chinese)  out  of  inspissated  mucus  from  the  large  sali- 
vary glands,  thus  transform  a  weight  of  material  much 
greater  than  that  of  their  own  body  into  this  gelatinous 
substance.  This  drain  on  the  system  is  so  great  that  if  the 
nest  is  stolen  the  second  one  is  not,  as  was  the  first,  white 
and  pure,  free  from  foreign  substances,  but  is  made  up 
largely  of  feathers,  hair,  etc.  Gould  took  from  the  lining 
of  the  nest  of  a  long-tailed  titmouse  some  20(X>  feathers. 
The  body  of  the  nest  was  made  up  of  lichen,  moss,  hair, 
etc.  The  weight  of  the  eggs  of  one  sitting  is  much  more 
than  that  of  her  own  body,  and  this  expenditure  of  energy 
in  nest-building  and  egg-bearing  is  in  all  birds  relatively 
enormous.  Doubtless  to  feed  the  nurselings  a  bird  ordi- 
narily flies  from  300  to  500  miles  a  day — with  how  many 
wing-strokes  to  the  mile  ?  To  illustrate  the  cooperation 
of  the  purely  physiologic  or  unconscious  processes  of  the 
body  with  the  birds'  willed  or  conscious  work,  it  may  be 
noted  that  during  incubation  the  temperature  of  the  mother's 


MATERNAL  LOVE.  83 

body  rises  several  degrees.  God  helps  mothers !  In  this 
connection  also  it  may  be  noted  that  the  hornbill  feeds  his 
wife  and  young  ones  (whom  he  has  securely  walled  in  their 
nest)  through  a  little  hole,  with  the  prepared  and  regurgit- 
ated food,  in  a  bag  or  pellicle,  derived  of  course  from  the 
lining  membrane  of  his  own  stomach. 

The  genesial  instinct  is  more  plainly  the  origin  of  edu- 
cational ingenuity  in  birds  than  in  other  animals.  No  two 
species  of  birds  build  nests  exactly  alike,  and  the  mechanic 
and  artistic  ability  of  some  is  astonishing.  That  mother- 
love  in  birds  begins  and  carries  on  the  education  and  ele- 
vation of  mentality  there  can  be  no  doubt.  It  is  certainly 
at  the  bottom  of  that  astounding  fact,  bird-migration,  a 
phenomenon  of  wonderful  significance  in  the  distribution 
of  the  flora,  and  even  of  the  fauna  of  the  whole  world. 

But  the  same  dominant  desire  also,  I  judge,  governs  the 
entire  habits,  distribution,  and  character  of  all  animals.  To 
find  a  lair  or  place  of  safety  for  mother  and  young,  and  to 
secure  food  for  those  at  home,  must  dictate  the  place  of 
living,  and  thus,  finally,  the  type  morphologically  and 
psychologically  of  every  species  of  animals.  The  ability 
to  elude  enemies  by  a  thousand  devices  must  form  mental 
habits  according  to  the  peculiarities  and  the  length  of  time 
of  those  habits.  Volumes  might  be  and  have  been  written 
describing  the  myriad  means  of  securing  safety  and  food, 
and  for  starting  the  youngsters  in  life  so  that  they  shall  be 
able  to  do  the  same  thing  again.  Pigeons  leave  the  nuts 
abundant  in  a  thousand  trees  where  they  are  raising  their 
young,  and  fly  hundreds  of  miles  to  get  their  food,  so  that 
when  hatched  the  weak-winged  youngsters  shall  have  food 
in  plenty  where  they  are.  To  illustrate  this  fact  let  me 
describe  one  thing  I  have  not  seen  in  print,  and  which 
shows  the  instant  and  incessant  government  by  the  repro- 
ductive instinct :  A  patient  from  Mexico  tells  me  he  has 
about    1000  brood   mares    on   his  ranch.      Each  stallion 


84  MATERNAL   LOVE. 

defends  and  commands  from  15  to  30  mares,  according  to 
his  fighting  ability.  He  keeps  his  family  always  distinct 
from  every  other,  and  this  segregation  is  so  rigid  that 
when  the  whole  thousand  are  "  rounded  up  "  and  driven 
pell-mell  into  a  corral  it  takes  the  stallions  perhaps  hours 
of  intense  running,  neighing,  whinnying,  fighting,  and 
hunting,  before  each  has  his  flock  separated  by  winding  but 
clearly-defined  alley-like  spaces  between  each  group.  Then 
the  men  may  enter !  When  running  loose,  if  one  group 
comes  near  another,  one  leader  may  try  to  drive  or  woo  a 
mare  of  another  family,  at  once  resulting  in  a  pitched 
battle  between  the  two  leaders.  The  fighting  is  done 
largely  on  the  hind  feet,  the  fore  legs  little  used,  the  aim 
being  to  seize  the  other's  neck  with  the  mouth.  If  one 
gets  a  good  "  hold  "  in  this  way  the  result  of  the  battle  and 
the  possession  of  the  object  of  battle  is  soon  settled. 
The  period  of  gestation  of  the  horse  is  eleven  months. 
My  informant  knows  that  it  several  times  occurred  in  one 
family  that  colts  born  nine  or  ten  months  after  a  mare  had 
been  placed  in  the  family  were  at  once  kicked  to  death  by 
the  jealously-wise  head  of  the  family,  who  had  not  been 
consulted  in  regard  to  the  matter. 

A  number  of  amphibious  animals  have  the  trick  of  living 
long  beneath  the  water,  and  of  keeping  the  submerged 
body  entirely  out  of  sight  while  exposing  the  tips  of  the 
nostrils  to  breathe.  To  find  a  home  and  security  for  his 
family  the  beaver  has  developed  a  marvelous  degree  of 
reason  and  architectural  genius  that  has  long  been  the 
admiration  of  man,  and  is  superior  to  that  of  the  bee.  The 
platypus  burrows  in  the  bank  of  a  stream,  one  tunnel 
entering  below  the  surface  of  the  water,  another  above  it, 
and  both  leading  to  the  nest.  Thus  he  can  use  either  and 
escape  all  observant  enemies. 

It  seems  at  present  impossible  to  estimate  the  due  pro- 
portion of  influence  this  necessity  of  nest-making,  cave- 


MATERNAL  LOVE.  85 

homing,  and  lair-devising,  all  for  the  young,  has  had  in 
developing  ingenuity  and  mentality  in  animals,  but  I  can- 
not doubt  it  has  been  the  preponderating  influence,  direct 
and  indirect,  in  spurring  one  species  of  animal  into  the 
human.  Archeology  and  anthropology  teem  with  hints 
and  proofs  of  this  fact.  Home-making  lies  at  the  basis  of 
all  progress  out  of  animality  into  humanity,  and  of  all 
advances  out  of  savagery  into  civilization.  And  is  it  not 
plain  that  the  family-relation  is  the  direct  product  and 
machinery  of  maternal  love  in  its  large  sense  ?  Every  ele- 
ment of  the  most  complex  civilization  springs  from  or  is 
vitally  related  with  the  home-making  industry.  Mere  food, 
until  a  high  degree  of  civilization  is  reached,  is  perishable 
almost  in  an  hour,  and  therefore  is  the  object  of  the  hour's 
need ;  but  possession  of  one  place  of  meeting,  or  of  seclu- 
sion, begets  the  fact  of  ownership.  Tools,  investments, 
houses,  all  things  manufactured  or  durable,  become  pos- 
sessions, and  hence  arises  the  conception  of  property,  and 
the  entire  legal  aspect  of  human  relationship  is  thus  seen 
to  spring  out  of  the  family  relation  and  flows  inevitably 
from  that  relation. 

One  of  the  most  sympathetic  and  open-eyed  observers  of 
animal  life,  Hudson,  says  that  most  all  wild  animals  have 
their  games,  dances,  plays,  or  amusements,  and  especially 
all  birds.  What  an  influence  love  exercises  in  the  forma- 
tion of  plumage,  coloration,  forms  and  habits,  of  all  ani- 
mals is  now  known  of  all  biologists,  indeed,  of  all  intelli- 
gent people.  Certain  it  is,  therefore,  that  most  all  beauty 
in  the  animal  world  (and  of  course  in  the  world  of  flowers 
it  is  wholly  true)  springs  from  some  phase  of  maternal 
love.  An  oriental  proverb  says  that  "  even  the  young  of 
the  ass  is  beautiful  !  "  Childhood,  either  of  plant,  of  animal, 
or  of  man,  is  the  one  superlative  exhibition  of  beauty.  A 
glimpse,  a  perfume,  a  flashing  and  gleaming  of  something 
superhumanly,   supernaturally  beautiful,  lingers  long  and 


86  MATERNAL  LOVE. 

caressingly  about  all  young  things.  The  greatest  picture, 
the  ever-painted  model,  the  never-realized  ideal  of  art- 
excellence,  is  the  mother  and  her  child.  Whatever  power 
for  good  or  evil  from  Troy-times  to  present-times  womanly 
beauty  and  charm  has  had  in  human  life, — surely  the  whole 
of  it  can  be  credited  or  debited  to  but  one  thing.  Art, 
whether  in  poesy,  drama,  novel,  sculpture,  or  painting,  is 
simply  myriad-phased  love.  Back  through  all  forms  of 
life,  clear  to  the  protozoa,  the  beautiful  is  linked  with  the 
maternal  in  indissoluble  unity.  Estheticism,  art,  all  that 
charms  and  delights,  is  the  reward  and  benediction  of  the 
divine  Father  and  his  pleasure  in  the  renewal  of  living 
forms. 

Now,  exactly  the  same  truth  applies  to  morality,  or  the 
emotion  of  altruism  !  In  all  family  life  when  the  sexual  or 
family  relation  is  not  in  action,  there  is  selfishness,  utter 
indifference,  or  positive  enmity  always  manifest.  The  prin- 
ciples of  individuation,  the  struggle  for  existence,  the  pre- 
servation of  self,  called  the  first  law  of  life  (but  wrongly  so- 
called),  have  unlimited  and  absolutely  exclusive  sway  of  all 
beings  and  functions,  except  when  love  and  the  care  of  the 
young  come  in  to  contradict  and  overrule  them.  Maternal 
love  is  the  miracle  of  all  biologic  existence.  It  cannot  be 
conceived  as  arising  by  any  action  of  "  environment "  or 
from  the  necessities  of  the  organism  standing  nakedly 
there.  Into  every  life,  nay,  into  every  fiber,  bone,  and  cell 
of  every  living  thing,  the  great  God,  Love,  stoops  down 
and  permeates,  nay,  He  clutches  and  masters  each  for  a 
purpose  beyond  and  after.  From  the  standpoint  of  pres- 
ent-day science,  from  the  standpoint  of  determinism,  fate 
or  chance,  from  the  standpoint  of  the  agnostic,  or  of  his 
twin-brother,  the  atheist,  this  maternal-paternal  love,  this 
all-powerful,  all-forming,  and  all-transforming  energy  is  the 
most  illogical,  most  uncaused,  most  utterly  unaccountable 
thing  conceivable.     We  can  explain  all  tilings  else  in  some 


MATERNAL   LOVE.  87 

half-blundering,  half-satisfactory  way,  but  for  this  exotic 
wonder  there  is  no  scientific  accounting  that  would  not 
make  a  mummy  laugh.  It  is,  it  comes  to  us  from  without, 
and  that  is  all  we  can  say.  It  is  the  one  patent,  convincing, 
unanswerable  proof  of  the  divine,  or  the  supernatural,  enter- 
ing and  grasping  the  organic  mechanism  for  ends  beyond 
that  organism  itself  And  its  first,  last,  continuous,  and 
increasing  effect  is  to  make  every  organism  value  and 
cherish  a  being  that  is  not  self  It  is  therefore  the  very 
basis  and  essence  of  all  that  is  ethical  and  religious.  Every 
animal  is  put  in  training  by  it  for  humanization,  and  be- 
comes through  it  a  faultless  illustration  for  us  of  the  super- 
naturalism  and  the  glory  of  ethics  and  of  other-love.  To 
the  childless  a  hundred  animal  stories  teach  that  there  are 
orphans  we  should  make  our  own  children.  Alas  !  The 
heart-broken  sadness,  the  pathos  beyond  tears  of  the 
motherless.  Read  Kipling's  Baa,  Baa,  Black  Sheep,  and 
then  think  of  what  is  going  on  in  the  breasts  of  thousands 
of  children  in  the  "  barrack-schools  "  of  England,  and  in 
the  orphan  asylums  of  America. 

The  limits  within  which  the  role  of  the  maternal  instinct 
is  confined  are  more  rigid  in  the  animal  world  than  in  the 
human.  I  doubt  if  any  one  knows  anything  about  the  old 
bachelors  and  old  maids  there.  Of  course,  there  are  but 
few  such,  but  these  few  must  occupy  strange  positions  in 
life.  After  the  productive  age  has  passed,  one  wonders  if 
wild  animals  keep  up  the  relics  of  family  life.  Probably 
not,  I  fear.  At  least,  one  species  of  birds,  the  cuckoos,  are 
sharp  little  scoundrels.  They  build  no  nests,  and  carrying 
their  eggs  in  their  mouths,  slip  them  into  the  nests  of  other 
birds,  where  they  are  hatched  some  days  in  advance  of  the 
eggs  of  the  rightful  owners.  Then  with  characteristic  in- 
humanity, or  unbirdity,  they  proceed  to  gobble  up  all  the 
food  and  kick  out  of  the  nest  the  rightful  children.  Male 
birds  often  arrive  in  migration  from  their  thousands  of  miles 


88  MATERNAL   LOVE. 

of  flight  before  their  mates,  but  the  same  mates  do  come, 
and  they  come  year  after  year  to  the  same  locality  and 
rebuild  their  nests  in  the  same  identical  spot.  This  home- 
attachment  has  numerous  illustrations.  A  water-wagtail 
once  built  her  nest  on  the  framework  beneath  a  railway 
passenger  car,  which  later  was  put  into  local  .service,  run- 
ning four  times  a  day  between  Cosham  and  Havant,  in 
England,  in  all  about  forty  miles.  At  this  time  there  were 
four  young  birds  in  the  nest,  and  the  little  father,  while  his 
family  were  away  promenaded  the  turntable,  etc.,  awaiting 
the  shunting  of  the  car  bringing  back  his  wife  and  babies. 
A  pair  of  tomtits  for  three  years  built  their  nest  in  a  letter 
box.  All  the  letters  posted  fell  upon  the  sitting  bird,  and 
the  splendid  postman  gathered  the  letters  and  left  the 
birdies. 

Among  animals  the  limits  of  the  control  of  the  maternal 
feeling  are  rigidly  confined  to  simple  necessity.  Love  seems 
to  disappear  as  soon  as  the  young  can  possibly  fly  and  get 
their  food — another  proof  of  its  supernatural  quality  and 
origin.  I  have  oftened  wondered,  too,  at  the  general 
indifference  of  the  father  to  the  young.  In  many,  per- 
haps most  animals,  the  father  seems  to  care  no  more  for 
his  children  than  if  they  were  moving  bushes.  Cer- 
tainly, he  cares  no  more  for  his  own  than  for  those  of 
another,  and  the  idea  of  any  love  toward  grandchildren  is 
absurd.     Not  even  the  mother  shows  this. 

But  it  is  of  the  greatest  interest  to  note  that  with  the  ap- 
pearance of  humanity  and  with  its  ideas  of  home  and  of 
property  (both  products  of  maternal  love)  there  arises  a 
natural  extension  of  the  scope  and  control  of  the  family 
instinct,  and  the  interest  of  the  parents  continues  into  or 
through  adult  life.  Support  and  protection  of  the  mother 
continues  beyond  the  child-bearing  period,  grandchildren 
are  beloved  (sometimes  I  have  noticed,  even  more  than  the 
children  themselves  were),  more  distant  relatives  are  held 


MATERNAL   LOVE.  89 

within  the  family  affection,  and  the  patriarchal  type  of 
society  is  established.  When  the  higher  ideals  of  society 
and  civilization  are  permitted  to  arise,  the  egis  of  love  is 
extended  over  the  nation,  and  patriotism  with  its  great  in- 
fluence in  war  and  history  appears.  Finally,  the  highest 
development  of  humanity  arises,  and,  still  an  actual  out- 
growth and  extension  of  maternal  love,  ethics  and  love  of 
humanity,  and  of  the  divine  Father-Mother  of  humanity, 
and  of  all  life,  takes  possession  of  the  loyal  being,  whether 
he  be  social  reformer,  philosopher,  pietist,  or  religionist. 

I  fear  that  I  have  wearied  you  :  Let  me  then  epiton)ize 
the  principles  about  which  I  have  gathered  my  much-wan- 
dering and  perhaps  incoherent  thoughts  : — 

1.  Among  the  factors  of  evolution  there  is  one  of  which 
scientists  have  made  too  little  or  no  account.  This  com- 
prises the  entire  grouping  as  one,  of  all  the  instincts 
variously  denominated  genesic,  sexual,  or  reproductive,  the 
whole  series  of  the  various  functions,  necessities,  and  results, 
going  to  the  begetting,  gestation,  nourishment,  and  train- 
ing of  the  young.  Conceived  thus  in  its  entirety  we  may, 
for  want  of  a  better  name,  denominate  it  maternal  love. 

2.  In  the  vegetable  this  energy  largely  and  entirely  dic- 
tates the  morphology  and  physiology  of  all  types  and 
species  of  plants,  and  is  the  sole  factor  in  their  flowering, 
seed-forming,  and  in  the  phenomenon  of  growth. 

3.  The  stored  food,  fashioned  by  the  cunning  and  secret 
chemistry  of  the  plant,  and  provided  by  maternal  love  for 
the  first  nourishment  of  its  young  in  the  seed,  is  the  ulti- 
mate source  of  nourishment  of  the  entire  animal  world, 
humanity,  of  course,  included. 

4.  In  the  animal  world  the  maternal  sentiment  more 
largely  than  any  other  or  all  other  causes,  leads  directly 
or  indirectly  to  the  development  of  ingenuity,  nest-build- 
ing, and  other  forms  of  home-making,  and  hence  to  mental 
evolution  and  progress  to  higher  types. 


90  MATERNAL  LOVE. 

5.  It  is  doubtless  in  this  special  way  the  prepotent  factor 
in  the  humanization  of  the  one  genus  or  species  of  animal 
from  which  we  have  sprung. 

6.  In  the  human  race  it  has  been  the  dominant  influence 
in  the  formation  and  progressive  growth  of  society  through 
its  effects  in  the  creation  of  property  and  private  rights, 
and  in  the  founding  of  homes,  of  families,  etc. 

7.  In  both  the  animal  and  the  human  race  it  has  been 
almost  the  sole  source  of  the  appreciation,  ideals,  and  facts 
of  esthetics,  all  forms  of  art  drawing  their  inspiration  and 
data  primarily  or  at  second  hand  from  its  exhibition  and 
function. 

8.  Religion  and  the  belief  in  the  supernatural  apart, 
there  is  not,  so  far  as  we  can  see,  any  other  cause  that  has 
been  in  the  least  operative  in  producing,  throughout  all 
biologic  history,  any  ethical  or  altruistic  fact  or  function 
whatsoever.  To  this  great  instinct  is  entirely  due  all  the 
practices  operative  in  plant  or  animal  for  the  welfare  of 
any  other  than  self.  And  in  the  highest  society  of  to- 
day every  ethical  act  derives,  directly  or  indirectly,  from  it. 

9.  Almost  all  other  evolutionary  factors  may  be  more 
or  less  satisfactorily  accounted  for  on  theories  of  "  na- 
tural "  causes,  such  as  "  natural  selection,"  the  persistence 
and  correlation  of  energy,  the  "  sensitiveness  of  proto- 
plasm," etc.,  etc.,  but  viewed  in  its  singleness  or  in  its  en- 
tirety, this  instinct,  so  far  as  our  intelligence  can  judge,  is 
plainly  uncaused  and  inexplicable,  and,  to  put  it  boldly,  is 
a  miracle,  thrust  among  all  other  natural  forces,  and  domi- 
nating all  for  its  half-hidden,  half-revealed  purposes. 

May  I  relate  a  dream  ? 

I  thought  that  maternal  love  and  all  pertaining  thereto 
ceased  appearing  in  our  world  because  mankind  did  not 
appreciate  the  beautiful  and  gratuitous  gift,  and  were  so 
ungrateful,  even  abusive  of  it,  that  God  grew  tired  thrust- 


MATERNAL  LOVE.  91 

ing  it  upon  us.  Men  and  women  had  grown  so  callous 
that  they  took  upon  themselves  the  awful  duties  of  parent- 
hood, and  then  neglected  their  children.  They  made 
orphans  by  thousands  and  then  left  them  to  be  cared  for 
in  horrible  asylums,  their  tender,  unpracticed,  unguided 
longings  bruised,  or  like  cellar-plants,  left  groping  for  hid- 
den light.  They  ruthlessly  killed  and  destroyed  all  things 
for  selfishness  and  amusement. 

And  so,  in  my  dream,  all  that  related  to  maternal  love 
silently  ceased  to  be,  and  I  wandered  among  strange-seem- 
ing people  and  profoundly  changed  scenes.  The  whole 
animal  world  became  other ;  ornament,  color,  gay  feather 
and  lightsome  song  gave  place  to  sad  makeshifts  of  utili- 
tarian hair,  bristles,  splotches,  screeches,  and  grunts.  Even 
in  the  eyes  and  faces  of  my  best  friends  all  became  different, 
hopelessly  pitying  or  inhumanly  hard  ;  deep-seated  selfish- 
ness gleamed  upon  one  everywhere  from  snake-like  eyes. 
Smiles  one  never  met,  but  an  occasional  risus  diaboli;  cac- 
chinations  of  derision  or  ridicule  were  heard,  for  men  and 
all  things  were  painfully  grotesque  and  altered  in  appear- 
ance. Men  jeered  at  each  other  because  all  beards  had 
disappeared  ;  the  glory  of  woman's  hair  had  also  gone. 
Worse  than  this,  the  beauty  faded  out  of  woman's  form  and 
feature,  and  instead  of  the  divine  charm  of  laughing  eyes 
and  radiant  winsomeness,  they  all  became  half  or  wholly 
repulsive,  coarse,  much  like  men,  and  yet  without  the  dig- 
nity or  strength  of  men.  The  men  had  likewise  become 
womanish  without  becoming  in  the  least  degree  womanly. 
The  beautiful,  except  perhaps  the  flash  of  moon  on  wave 
or  sun  on  mountain-top,  had  gone  out  of  the  world. 

No  children  were  born,  and  those  that  existed  were 
thrust  out  to  die  or  live  neglected,  or  were  fed  out  of  illogic 
pity.  There  was  not  a  flower  in  the  world.  Almost  all 
human  social  gatherings  ceased  ;  why  should  people  meet 
together  now,  when  they  had  no  pleasure  in  each  other, 


92  MATERNAL  LOVE. 

and  when  each  looked  on  the  other  thinking  only  how  his 
money  could  be  gotten  away  from  him  ?  Men  left  their 
homes  and  were  never  heard  of  again,  and  in  all  places 
strangers,  uncouth,  ill-clothed,  brutal,  and  cruel,  came  and 
went  in  objectless  ebb  and  flow.  Who  had  wealth  turned 
it  into  gold  or  portable  goods.  All  commercial  credit 
ceased  ;  banks  closed  their  doors  ;  every  one  barricaded 
his  house,  and  went  about  '*  armed  to  the  teeth."  The 
iron-mills  and  rolling-mills  went  on,  and  many  manufacto- 
ries, but  everywhere  was  harshness,  and  grind,  and  ugli- 
ness. Despair  and  idiocy,  and  crime  and  insanity  instantly 
increased  a  hundred-fold.  An  awful  shudder,  a  cosmic 
horror  crept  like  cold  snakes  through  the  arteries  ;  the 
blood  curdled  in  all  hearts.  Women  whispered  to  men  an 
awful  message,  and  men  moaned  it  to  each  other ;  hungry- 
eyed  dogs  divined  it  in  their  masters'  eyes ;  it  ran  like 
doom  along  the  branches  of  the  leafless  trees,  down  to  the 
roots,  and  there  every  mole  and  insect  was  frozen  with 
terror  of  it.  God  is  dead  ! — were  the  agonizing  words  that 
palsied  thought  and  emotion,  and  that  clutched  at  the  life- 
springs  of  every  bosom. 

Slowly  the  prices  of  everything  commenced  rising  and 
famine  began.  It  was  found  during  the  second  year  that 
the  stock  of  grain  was  nearly  or  quite  exhausted.  Seed 
sowed  in  the  ground  came  up,  but  there  was  no  new  seed 
formed.  The  cattle  had  died  off  in  great  numbers  during 
the  first  and  second  winters  because  the  owners  kept  the 
little  corn  that  was  left  to  still  their  own  personal  hunger. 
No  calves  or  lambs  were  born,  no  chickens  hatched,  and 
the  older  animals  could  not  get  enough  grass,  leaves,  or 
roots  during  the  summer  to  carry  them  into  the  next 
winter,  the  third,  when  death  would  surely  come.  But 
they  were  not  allowed  to  live  that  long;  and  during  this 
second  year  every  animal  all  over  the  world  and  of  what- 
soever kind  that   could  be  reached  by  the  ingenuity  of 


MATERNAL   LOVE.  93 

man's  hunger  had  been  sacrificed.  Then  began  universal 
famine,  cannibalism,  and  unutterable  horror.  Everywhere 
was  death,  and  death  was  everywhere.  Within  two  years 
from  the  death  of  love  there  was  naught  but  death.  Rocks 
and  sand  and  waters  there  were,  a  desert-world  just  like 
that  before  the  angel  of  maternal  love  came  among  the 
rocks  and  sands  and  waters,  and  made  out  of  them  the 
world  we  know,  the  world  of  grain  and  fruit,  the  world  of 
sweet,  cool  grass,  the  world  of  rustling  leaves,  the  world 
of  beautiful,  wonderful  animal  forms,  the  world  of  friends, 
the  world  of  baby- faces, — the  world  of  God  ! 


LIFE  AND  ITS  PHYSICAL  BASIS.* 

In  a  letter  from  a  famous  thinker  and  writer  lately  re- 
ceived, commenting  upon  some  statement  concerning  a 
physiologic  function,  my  correspondent  writes  :  "  I  am,  as 
a  physiologist,  quite  opposed  to  regarding  life  as  an  entity 
instead  of  a  function."  With  this  bit  of  unscientific  dog- 
matism a  popular  plebifactor  of  science  is  well  satisfie'd  and 
proceeds  in  this  way :  "  Chemistry  has  now  told  us  that 
'  Life '  as  an  entity  has  no  more  existence  than  the  phlog- 
iston of  the  earlier  chemists,  and  that  the  series  of  phe- 
nomena to  which  we  give  the  name  of  life  are  changes 
undergone  by  complex  compounds  of  carbon  composing 
very  large  and  unstable  compounds."  The  only  proper 
answer  to  this  is  a  choice  example  of  curbstone  slang, 
more  forcible  than  polite.  It  is  itself  a  compound,  "very 
large  and  unstable,"  but  of  simple  construction,  being  made 
up  of  about  equal  parts  of  lie,  ignorance,  and  impertinence, 
in  mechanical  mixture,  not  chemical  union,  f  Such  things 
are  to  be  regretted  because  they  harm  the  advance  of  true 
science,  a  matter  in  which  we  all  have  the  most  vital  and 
vivid  interest.  But  the  unscientific  prejudice  of  many  like 
my  correspondent,  who  think  they  find  in  physiologic  and 
biologic  studies  confirmation  of  a  materialistic  creed,  is 

*  A  paper  read  before  several  societies. 

f  In  the  best,  most  recent  and  most  scientific  text-book  on  the  subject  I 
know  of,  I  find  these  words :  "  The  chemical  operations  performed  by  the 
living  cell  cannot  be  imitated  in  the  laboratory,  or  explained  by  any  known 
chemical  laws."  (Halliburton,  Handbook  of  Chemical  Physiology  and  Path- 
ology, p.  2IO.) 

94 


LIFE   AND   ITS   PHYSICAL   BASIS.  95 

chiefly  to  be  regretted  for  their  personal  sakes  ;  they  miss  so 
much  and  narrow  their  minds  quite  unnecessarily.  No  man 
ever  saw  anything  that  in  the  remotest  degree  could  logically 
suggest  that  life  is  a  function  of  matter ;  there  is  not  a 
biologic  fact  that  does  not  demonstrate  the  contrary ;  and 
yet  these  unscientific  philosophers  pretend  that  they  are 
pupils  in  a  school  that  at  matriculation  demands  freedom 
from  dogma,  and  induction  only  after  patient  study  of  facts. 
To  the  student  of  the  history  of  thought  these  dogmatists 
are  seen  to  be  simply  the  dupes  of  a  psychologic  Zeitgeist 
of  reaction  from  past  theologic  dogma.  Scientific  dogma- 
tism has  the  advantage  over  the  religious  variety  in  being 
sooner  exposed  and  shorter-lived,  but  it  is  altogether  more 
inexcusable. 

I  would  be  glad  in  the  interests  of  a  monistic  faith  to 
see  any  means  of  escape  from  the  dualism  of  life  and 
matter,  but  frankly  observing  the  facts  I  do  not  see  the 
least  loop-hole  of  any  such  possible  escape.  In  addi- 
tion to  the  chemic  elements  and  their  compounds,  we  in- 
clude under  the  term  matter,  the  ether  with  its  functions 
of  light,  heat,  electricity  and  magnetism.  These,  with  the 
chemic  elements  and  their  compounds,  are  all  governed 
absolutely  by  the  laws  of  the  physical  or  mechanic  forces, 
and  compose  the  material  universe.  This  material  uni- 
verse gives  me  no  hint  of  design  or  designer.  Frantic  at- 
tempts have  been  made  to  argue  its  derived  existence  from 
the  fact,  first  of  its  orderliness.  But  in  the  first  place  what 
order  exists  is  generally  more  apparent  than  real,  and  it  is 
easily  forgotten  that  there  exists  the  most  astonishing 
jumble  and  disorder  as  characteristics  of  great  parts  if  not 
the  most  of  the  physical  universe,  in  the  oceans,  in  the 
facts  of  meteorology,  in  the  Arctic  regions,  in  the  configura- 
tion and  structure  of  the  earth's  crust,  in  the  meteors  and 
other  examples  of  disorder  in  the  solar  or  stellar  systems. 
In  the  second  place,  the  order  observable  is  always  the 


96  LIFE  AND   ITS   PHYSICAL   BASIS. 

result  of  the  law  of  gravity  ;  the  stratification  of  the  earth's 
crust,  the  flow  of  rivers,  the  revolutions  of  the  planets,  the 
very  formation  of  planets  and  systems,  lastly  and  of  most 
importance,  the  formation  of  the  molecule  and  of  all  chemic 
combinations  and  laws,  seem  all  to  be  simple  instances  of  the 
results  of  gravity.  Now  if  one  finds  evidence  of  a  creator  in 
gravity  and  gravity-produced  order,  his  mind  is  differently 
formed  from  mine.  Another  argument  that  has  been  relied 
on  is  a  supposed  logical  necessity  to  ascribe  to  a  cause  what- 
ever exists ; "  matter  must  have  been  created  because  it  could 
not  have  created  itself"  All  the  logic  in  this  lies  in  the 
equally  true  paradox,  God  must  have  been  created  because 
He  could  not  have  created  Himself  It  is  only  when 
design  and  purpose  and  nonmechanical  reactions  distin- 
guish a  thing  that  logic  requires  its  reference  to  a  designer. 
We  do  not  dream  of  attempting  to  fathom  the  origin  of 
life,  but  when  nonliving  matter  shows  living  forces  and 
mentality,  we  must  ascribe  these  to  something  extra- 
material.  "  The  final  and  strongest  defense  of  the  argu- 
ment for  a  derived  origin  of  matter  consists  in  the  uni- 
formity of  size  and  nature  of  all  the  atoms  of  one  element. 
Identity  requires  explanation.  All  the  atoms  of  hydrogen 
are  identical.  If  the  result  of  chance,  they  would  have 
been  of  infinite  variety  of  size  and  qualities."  In  answer  to 
this  it  might  be  said  that  in  the  infinite  attritions  of  an  in- 
finite universe  in  infinite  time,  like  atoms  would  necessarily 
be  produced  and  be  gathered  together.  In  a  shot  tower 
the  simple  fact  of  descent  sorts  the  different  sized  shot  with 
mathematical  exactness.  The  heavier  fall  the  faster. 
Space  is  infinite — an  endless  shot  tower — and  gravity  almost 
alone  would  sort  varieties  of  atoms  into  classes.  The  sixty 
or  seventy  varieties  of  elements  are  possibly  the  chance- 
groupings  or  gravity-sortings,  and  classes,  of  the  atoms. 
The  mechanic  law  of  "  Natural  selection  "  would  apply 
here  in  a  way  it  cannot  apply  elsewhere.     The  atoms  that 


LIFE   AND   ITS   PHYSICAL  BASIS.  97 

vary  from  the  greater  average  would  fall  of  themselves  to 
another  class,  or  would  quickly  be  ground  to  uniformity 
by  the  attrition  of  their  fellows. 

It  is  life  alone  that  gives  incontrovertible  evidence  of 
divinity — not  of  an  omnipotent  or  omniscient  one — but  of 
one  that  by  the  very  fact  that  he  is  finite  and  working 
under  difficulties  brings  him  all  the  nearer  to  our  hearts 
and  makes  love  and  veneration  the  spontaneous  offering  of 
all  sane  minds  and  sympathetic  hearts.  Untouched  by 
life  the  universe  would  be  in  the  condition  of  the  moon, 
without  a  vestige  of  any  living  thing.  The  trans- 
cendent metamorphosis  worked  by  life  is  hardly  to  be 
realized  by  one  who  has  not  stood  in  the  awful  desolation 
of  some  wholly  lifeless  region.  The  vegetable  world,  and 
it  alone  is  able  to  evolve  from  inorganic  materials  a  true 
but  probably  a  comparatively  simple  protoplasm.  The 
higher  animal  is  utterly  dependent  upon  this  power  of  the 
plant,  relying  for  its  food  upon  the  formed  protoplasm 
robbed  from  the  vegetable  kingdom.  The  fact  shows  the 
essential  unity  of  the  plant  and  animal  worlds,  and 
emphasizes  the  fundamental  difference  of  the  world  of  life 
over  against  the  world  of  dead  matter.  The  two  are 
entirely  uncorrected  phases  of  being,  no  monistic  faith  or 
philosophy  offering  a  hint  of  any  hidden  unity  or  identity 
of  the  two.  The  ingenuous  perception  and  conviction  of 
their  utter  disparity  is  the  faith  of  mankind.  To  assert  the 
nonexistence  or  the  derived  nature  of  either  is  philosophic 
moonshine.  There  is  no  dexterity  of  mental  gymnastics 
that  renders  thinkable  the  creation  or  annihilation  of 
matter,  or  the  generation  out  of  it  of  life  or  mentality.  All 
sane  thinking  must  at  the  outset  posit  as  axiomatic  these 
two  independent  and  underived  forms  of  Being. 

The  Chemic  Molecule. — The  most  striking  character- 
istic of  an  inorganic  molecule  is  that  it  is  a  rigidly 
mechanical  system.  It  has  no  spontaneous  movement,  and 
9 


98  LIFE  AND  ITS  PHYSICAL  BASIS. 

no  adaptive  reactions,  except  such  as  are  mechanically  pre- 
dictable ;  under  given  circumstances,  thermic  and  mechanic, 
its  component  elements  being  present,  it  will  always  form ; 
under  a  definite  impact  of  heat  it  will  always  break  up 
into  its  elements.  As  a  matter  of  convenience  we  speak  of 
it  as  reacting,  but  it  rightly  has  no  reaction,  being  only 
acted  upon  ; — it  is  dead,  movable  only  from  without.  In 
forming,  a  definite  and  invariable  amount  of  heat  is  ab- 
sorbed, and  the  same  amount  being  again  given  it,  it  at 
once  breaks  up  into  its  constituent  parts.  Heat  being  the 
indicator  of  atomic  vibration,  thermo-chemistry  would  be  a 
science,  if  perfected,  of  surpassing  exactness,  and  would 
indicate  by  a  heat-equivalent,  the  precise  constitution  and 
condition  of  every  compound.  It  would  be  the  record  of 
the  exact  number  and  extent  of  path  of  its  atomic  vibra- 
tions— all  that  we  could  desire  to  know  about  it.  It  would 
constitute  the  astronomy  of  the  molecule.  Because,  it 
would  appear  that  in  a  final  analysis,  gravity  almost  or  quite 
explains  the  intimate  interactions  of  the  molecule's  parts, 
as  it  does  those  of  the  elements  of  the  solar  system,  the 
vibrations  of  the  atoms  doubtless  following  the  same  laws 
as  the  planets  in  their  circuits.  Every  molecule,  we  know, 
is  a  closed  and  unitary  system,  its  elements  never  in  con- 
tact, but  ever  in  ceaseless  vibration,  with  varying  rapidities 
and  extent  of  path.  The  vibrations  of  the  ether  penetrate 
the  densest  bodies,  showing  that  the  atoms  move  wide 
apart  from  each  other  like  the  planets.  The  moving  planet 
by  displacing  the  circumambient  ether,  may  possibly  create 
a  slight  ether-breeze,  as,  many  miles  per  second,  it  darts 
through  space  ;  it  may  be  likened  to  an  almost  frictionless- 
net  passing  through  water,  or  a  zephyr  through  a  leafless 
tree.  Hertz  passed  electric  or  ether-vibrations  quite  un- 
changed through  a  solid  stone  wall  several  feet  in  thickness, 
and  light  seems  to  escape  the  atoms  of  glass  much  as 
supposed  arrows  would  escape  the  planets  if  shot  from  a 


LIFE  AND  ITS  PHYSICAL   BASIS.  99 

star  through  our  solar  system.  A  molecule  or  a  mass  of 
molecules  is  dense  just  in  proportion  to  the  extent  of  swing 
of  its  atoms.  Heat  is  the  measure  of  these  swingings  or 
revolutions.  Absolute  zero  in  temperature,  a  calculated 
thermometric  registration  of — 273  C.  would  correspond  to 
atomic  immobility  and  absolutely  impenetrable  density. 
This  is  only  a  reasoned  or  imagined  condition,  not  only  not 
existing,  but  beyond  experimental  production.  The  num- 
ber of  miles  per  second  traveled  by  a  single  atom  of  the 
atmosphere  of  our  room  is  calculated  and  the  number  of  its 
collisions  with  other  atoms  and  the  sides  of  the  room. 
The  pressure  of  the  gas  in  your  gas  pipe  or  against  the 
gasometer  is  simply  the  sum  of  the  blows  of  its  individual 
atoms  upon  the  containing  sides.  The  blow  of  the  black- 
smith's hammer  upon  the  anvil  is  the  blow  of  one 
mass  of  billions  of  vibrating  atoms  upon  the  mass  of 
billions  of  other  vibrating  atoms.  The  hardness  of  a  body 
is  the  common  name  for  the  lessened  but  not  stopped 
swingings  of  its  constituent  parts.  The  softness  of  a  body 
or  its  gaseous  state  is  due  to  the  increased  vibration  of  its 
elements.  Give  the  atoms  of  a  wall  of  cold  steel  more 
"  swing "  than  they  already  have,  and  you  could  walk 
through  the  wall  as  through  air.  The  disruption  of  a  mole- 
cule by  an  increment  of  heat  is  effected  by  a  simple  increase 
of  the  centrifugal  force  of  the  atoms  like  that  attending  in- 
crease of  revolution  in  a  body  rotating  about  a  fixed  center. 
Increase  the  speed  of  Neptune  in  his  orbit  and  he  would 
be  flung  off  beyond  the  control  of  the  Sun's  gravitation. 
It  is  doubtless  in  this  way  that  the  impacts  of  ether-waves 
effect  chemic  changes.  If  the  vibratory  period  of  the  ether- 
wave  be  identical  with  that  of  certain  loosely-held  elements 
of  the  molecule,  the  disruption  is  instantaneous,  as  in  the 
photographer's  sensitive  plate.  Chemic  molecules  are  thus 
seen  to  be  physical  microcosms,  ruled  by  a  rigid  mechanic- 
alism.     Were  our  microscopes  sufficiently  powerful  and  our 


100  LIFE  AND   ITS  PHYSICAL  BASIS. 

vision  sufficiently  swift,  we  should  find  many  varieties  of 
simple  and  complex  systems  of  intervibrating  elements  of 
which  our  solar  system  is  but  a  single  type,  others  hidden 
by  our  want  of  a  perfect  telescope — but  whatever  the 
variety,  all  alike  ruled  by  a  simple  physical  law.  The  for- 
mation of  a  complex  chemic  molecule,  one  composed  of 
numerous  varieties  of  elements,  illustrates  the  law  in  the 
definite  mathematic  proportions  of  its  constituent  parts,  the 
relative  feebleness  or  strength  of  the  bonds  of  union,  in  the 
preservation  of  compound  radicals,  etc.,  etc. 

The  Organic  Molecule,  or  •' Somacule." — How  does 
the  protoplasmic*  or  living  molecule,  or  somacule,  differ 
from  its  inorganic  analogue,  the  chemic  molecule?  Prim- 
arily and  profoundly,  of  course,  in  that  it  has  life.  The 
materialist  says  it  differs  in  no  important  respect.  As  the 
sodium  chlorid  molecule  has  a  property  we  call  saltiness, 
so  the  protoplasmic  molecule  has  liveliness,  both  necessary 
qualities  of  their  molecular  structure — mere  functions  of 
the  peculiar  combinations  of  the  elements  of  each.  It  is 
waste  words  to  ask  if  the  salinity  can  be  taken  from  salt, 
leaving  the  salt  there,  as  the  life  can  be  taken  from  proto- 
plasm, and  leave  the  protoplasm  present.  It  is  quite  use- 
less to  argue  with  such  folk.  It  is  simply  a  question  of 
perceiving,  and  when  one  is  congenitally  afflicted  with  this 
sort  of  mental  strabismus  and  amblyopia,  it  is  absurd  to 
expect  help,  except  as  one  says,  from  a  surgical  operation. 
He  cannot  see  that  the  difference  between  living  matter 
and  dead  matter  is  the  greatest  difference  existing  between 
perceived  things. 

*  The  word  protoplasm  is  an  unfortunate  and  misused  term.  It  has  no 
meaning  whatever  now,  having  been  used  to  designate  such  a  multitude  of 
differing  things.  In  all  probability  the  substance  most  commonly  spoken  of 
as  protoplasm  is  not  living,  but  is  stored  nucleus-food.  The  nomenclature  of 
these  things  needs  reorganization.  Until  this  is  done  we  are  forced,  for  con- 
venience's sake,  to  use  the  word  as  a  synonym  of  living  matter. 


LIFE  AND  ITS  PHYSICAL  BASIS.  lol 

To  be  more  specific,  the  somacule  differs  from  the  mole- 
cule in  its  amazing  complexity  of  atomic  construction. 
No  analysis  is  possible,  the  guessings  as  to  the  number 
of  constituent  atoms  differing  by  many  hundreds,  some 
estimating  the  simplest  system  to  be  composed  of  from 
three  hundred  to  a  thousand.  Lieberkiihn's  formula  for 
albumin  is  C72HU2N18O22S ;  Harnack  gives  it  as  C204H322N52- 
O66S2 ;  Schiitzenberger  as  C210H392N65O75S3.  Inorganic  forces 
can  build  up  no  such  a  complex  system  as  this.  It  requires 
a  hypermechanic  power.  If  our  planetary  system  were 
suddenly  enriched  by  one  or  two  thousand  dazzling 
planets,  moons,  and  comets,  would  not  confusion  and 
collision  certainly  result?  Mechanic  products  like  atoms, 
chemic  substances,  nails,  etc.,  are  characterized  by  likeness 
or  identity.  But  all  organic  products  differ  one  from 
another.  Brothers  differ  in  expression,  physical  organi- 
zation, and  characteristics.  Not  even  twins  are  as  like  as 
two  atoms  or  two  samples  of  the  same  chemic  compound. 
It  is  said  that  in  transfusion  of  blood  the  assimilative 
tissues  of  one  person  will  not  accept  the  formed  corpuscles 
of  another.  These  have  to  be  broken  down  and  the 
component  materials,  not  the  end-products,  used  or  ex- 
creted. All  that  is  gained  by  transfusion  is  a  sudden 
supply  of  nutritive  material  in  an  emergency  to  tide  over 
a  temporary  and  dangerous  want.  This  points  to  what 
must  be  admitted  as  a  fact,  that  protoplasm  is  infinitely 
variable.  It  is  probably  true  that  at  no  two  moments  of  the 
existence  of  a  cell  is  its  molecular  condition  and  atomic 
construction  exactly  the  same.  It  is  probably  true  that  no 
two  cells  are  exactly  of  the  same  constitution.  It  is  almost 
certainly  true  that  the  cells  of  different  organized  tissues 
must  differ  from  each  other,  one  organ  requiring  cells  of 
wholly  different  powers  and  hence  of  varying  constitution, 
from  the  cells  of  another  organ.  It  is  beyond  question 
that  the  general  formula  of  molecular  and  atomic  construe- 


I02  LIFE  AND   ITS   PHYSICAL   BASIS. 

tion  must  differ  in  each  and  every  individual.  A  dog  can 
distinguish  the  smell  of  the  impress  of  his  master's  foot  or 
.hand  from  that  of  every  other  person  in  the  world.  If  the 
volatile  particles  of  cell-metamorphosis  differ  so  contin- 
uously and  exactly,  then  the  general  chemic  formula  of 
the  cells  must  necessarily  differ.  In  this  way,  within 
limits,  the  protoplasmic  formula  of  one  family  must  differ 
from  that  of  another,  of  one  nation  or  race  from  other 
nations  and  races,  etc.  Every  one  recognizes  the  peculiar 
body-odor  of  the  African,  the  Chinese,  of  certain  famihes 
of  animals,  etc.  All  this  is  in  striking  contrast  to  mechanic 
products,  and  it  only  finds  its  explanation  in  the  infinite 
adaptability  of  life  to  every  material  used  as  food,  to  every 
peculiarity  of  the  historic  development,  and  to  every  change 
in  the  enviroment.  Alum,  carbon  dioxid,  or  quinin  sulphate 
are  the  same  whether  produced  a  thousand  years  ago,  and 
however  produced,  but  a  living  cell,  or  a  living  organism, 
is  never  duplicated  by  Nature,  every  being  that  has  lived 
on  the  earth  being  different  from  every  other  that  has  ever 
lived  or  that  ever  will  live. 

Since  Life  works  only  by  and  through  the  individual 
cell,  creating  and  evermore  remolding  the  cell  according 
to  the  peculiar  work  and  circumstance,  glimpses  are  caught 
of  purposive  and  progressive  spontaneity  and  of  cosmic 
import.  Mechanicalism  has  no  place  or  application  here. 
In  the  bioplastic  molecule.  Life,  the  divine  architect,  builds 
an  exquisite  order  of  bewildering  complexity  out  of  the 
crude  materials  of  simple  mechanic  vibrating  systems,  and 
sits  in  its  midst  guiding  and  utilizing  the  physical  in  the 
interests  of  the  metaphysical.  Purpose — a  quality  un- 
known in  mechanical  systems  or  molecules — is  the  distinc- 
tive characteristic  of  all  living  things.  The  molecule- 
building  power  of  the  inorganic  world  is  the  fulcrum  ot 
Life,  and  the  release  of  force  by  the  breaking  down  of  the 
more  complex   molecule  into  the  simpler  (katabolism)  is 


LIFE  AND   ITS   PHYSICAL   BASIS.  I03 

the  means  whereby  Life  acts  within  the  physical  domain. 
The  purposive  direction  of  energy  is  her  one  function,  and 
the  energy  is  always  derived  from  the  reduction  of  more 
complex  to  less  complex  compounds.  To  coin  a  couple 
of  needed  terms — biokinesigenesis  (the  production  of  vital 
energy)  is  always  the  product  of  cytolysis  (the  disruption 
of  cell-substance),  the  unlocking  of  a  chemic  bond  and  the 
release  of  subjugated  atoms.  It  makes  no  difference  what 
the  form  of  vital  energy  may  be,  whether  it  be  a  secreting, 
contracting,  a  nervous,  or  a  connective-tissue  cell,  its  every 
function  subsists  by  reason  of  a  reduction  of  its  substance 
to  a  simpler  system,  ending  finally  in  a  change  in  con- 
struction of  product,  a  metamorphosis  of  molecular  into 
molar  motion,  a  transfer  of  energy,  a  support  of  weight, 
etc.  The  analogue  of  this  vital  production  of  energy  by 
cytolysis  is  the  condensation  of  the  solar  system,  the  pre- 
servation of  the  sun's  working  energy,  whilst  his  total 
energy  is  being  reduced.  Unlike  the  somacule,  the  solar 
system  cannot  be  fed  from  without,  and  so  its  shrinkage 
and  decreasing  energy  will  finally  end  in  stagnation  and 
death.  It  is  from  the  energy  derived  from  the  metabolism 
of  the  somacule  that  life  gains  the  power  of  preserving  a 
uniform  temperature.  This  power  is  one  of  the  most 
striking  proofs  of  nonmechanicalism,  of  supernaturalism 
if  you  please,  displayed  in  organic  existence.  All  life's 
forces  are  dependent  upon  such  a  condition  of  atomic 
vibration,  or  heat,  as  will  preserve  the  somacule  in  the 
highest  state  of  complexity  or  unstable  equilibrium.  So 
delicately  poised  must  be  the  molecular  balance,  that  the 
slightest  breath  of  desire  or  stimulus  can  at  once  release 
small,  large,  or  continuous  increments    of   energy.*     To 


*  Of  the  total  product  of  energy  or  heat  evolved  by  the  body,  about  seven 
per  cent,  is  used  in  external  mechanical  work ;  of  the  remainder,  four-fifths 
are  lost  through  the  skin,  the  remaining  fifth  by  the  lungs  and  excreta. 


t<H  LIFE  AND   ITS   PHYSICAL   BASIS. 

preserve  this  wonderful  equipoise  and  adjustment  is  an  as- 
tounding exhibition  of  overruling  intelligence  and  watch- 
fulness. Every  mechanic  system  tends  to  stagnation  and 
death,  and  must  be  preserved  by  extrasystemic  additions  of 
force.  The  physical  system,  clock,  molecule,  solar  me- 
chanism, or  steam  engine,  cannot  recoup  itself,  cannot 
prevent  the  tendency  to  "  run  down."  Protoplasm  alone 
has  a  self-preserving  and  self-regulating  power. 

Every  physician  knows  the  meaning  and  the  danger  of 
fever.  With  fever,  life  is  losing  control  of  her  atoms,  the 
most  fundamental  condition  of  her  government  of  organic 
processes.  Centrifugalism  is  getting  the  better  of  centri- 
petalism.  With  increased  atomic  vibration  there  is  in- 
creased dissipation  of  force,  and  dangerous  dissolution  of 
the  somacule.  Katabolism  gains  upon  anabolism.  With 
increased  loss  there  must  be  increased  supply,  and  this  fact 
gives  everlasting  warrant  for  the  quaint  epitaph  of  the  old 
physician,  *'  He  fed  fevers."  The  preservation  of  an  equa- 
ble temperature  of  the  body,  is  the  instant,  true  and  genuine 
miracle  continuously  performed  by  life.  But  if  fever  is 
dangerous,  a  subnormal  temperature  is  far  more  so.  It 
means  death,  molecular  and  somatic.  The  somacule  can- 
not deliver  force  if  the  dance  of  its  constituent  atoms  is 
crowded  and  chilled  and  lessened.  Though  submerged 
in  food  and  water,  it  dies  of  starvation  and  thirst.  These 
things  show  us  how  narrow  a  range  of  choice  and  power 
life  has,  and  how  jealously  matter  imposes  upon  Hfe  its 
rigid  conditions.  A  few  degrees  of  temperature  above  the 
normal  is  dangerous,  a  few  below  is  death.  If  an  automa- 
tic mechanism  governs  the  uniformity  of  temperature,  its 
device  and  perfection  must  have  been  a  task  of  long  and 
subtle  difficulty.  If  the  materialist  prefers  to  ascribe  the 
production  of  the  wonderful  mechanism  to  his  new  deity, 
Natural  Selection,  one  can  only  answer  that  the  endow- 
ment of  a  mechanic  principle  with  divine  powers  explains 


LIFE   AND   ITS    PHYSICAL   BASIS.  105 

nothing,  and  seems  no  advance  upon  the  elder  nomencla- 
ture. 

The  Cell. — The  cell  may  be  described  as  an  organized 
multitude  of  somacules,  corresponding  to  a  universe  of 
solar  systems.  The  atoms  correspond  to  the  planets,  aste- 
roids, etc.,  the  somacule  to  the  solar  system,  the  cell  to  the 
whole  of  the  interrelated  suns  of  one  nebula  or  universe. 
The  harmonic  law  of  stellar  relations  has  not  been  dis- 
covered and  therefore  the  further  comparison  of  the  animal 
body  to  the  interrelations  of  different  masses  of  nebulae,  or 
universes,  if  one  maybe  pardoned  the  absurd  expression, 
becomes  meaningless.  The  somacule  is  the  biologic  unit, 
the  cell  the  physiologic  unit.  It  has  been  estimated  that 
the  smallest  living  particle  visible  under  the  microscope 
contains  about  two  million  molecules  of  living  matter. 
But  this  estimate  needs  two  qualifications.  The  first  is  that 
from  80  to  85  percent,  of  every  protoplasmic  mass  consists 
of  water ;  and  the  second  is  that  a  large,  if  not  much  the 
larger  part  of  the  cell-mass  is  composed,  not  of  true  living 
protoplasm  but  of  dead  food,  not  yet  transformed  into  living 
matter,  and  of  dead  waste-product,  or  excreta,  both  of 
which  are  no  part  of  the  true  organism.  Thus  the  real 
living,  directing  and  modifying  part  of  the  cell  is  composed 
of  not  more  than  10  or  20  millions  of  somacules.  It  is  this 
fact  that  gives  the  swift  beheading  stroke  to  every  material- 
istic theory  of  heredity  and  descent.  Suppose  that  every 
somacule  had  an  individuality  and  an  identity  peculiar  to 
itself;  would  any  school-boy  deny  that  the  ancestral  and 
racial  inheritance  of  the  child  from  its  parent  does  not  in 
the  stupendous  multitude  of  details,  outnumber  these  paltry 
20  millions  by  incalculable  millions  of  millions  ?  The  ab- 
surdity becomes  ludicrous  when  we  further  remember  that 
at  an  early  stage  of  cell-development,  these  few  millions  of 
elements  give  no  evidence  of  structural  difference.  Then 
again  if  a  somacule  is  to  carry  from  the  parent  the  power 
10 


io6  LIKE   AND   ITS   PHYSICAL   BASIS. 

to  mold  a  special  organ  or  tissue  of  the  child,  it  must 
learn  its  lesson  in  the  like  tissue  of  the  parent,  and  having 
so  learned  it,  must  pass  thence  to  ovary  or  testicle  and  be 
incorporated  with  millions  of  other  cells  which  have  learned 
their  lesson  from  every  other  tissue  of  the  parent  body. 
Now  every  cell  of  every  organ  has  a  certain  peculiarity  of 
function,  of  position,  or  of  nature.  Therefore,  if  we  are 
logical,  a  germ-cell  (or  sperm-cell)  must  serve  as  pupil 
under  all  the  tutor-cells  of  every  organ  and  tissue  of  the 
parent-body,  and  thence  proceed  to  form  and  develop  first 
the  ovum  or  spermatozoid,  and  then  the  child-body.  But 
if  this  is  an  absolute  logical  demand,  the  total  mass  of  the 
cells  of  the  ovum  must  equal  in  number  those  of  the 
parent-body.  That  is,  the  ovum  is  as  large  as  the  adult 
parent !  This  reductio  ad  absurdum  is  but  one  of  the  in- 
numerable logical  quagmires  in  which  one  finds  himself 
wallowing  who  sets  out  to  follow  the  Will-o-the-wisp  of 
materialism.  If  it  be  supposed  that  a  speck  of  bioplasm 
^^U"  of  an  inch  in  diameter  as  a  physical  mechanic  system 
contains  the  billionfold  results  of  millions  of  years  of  past 
ancestral  experience,  one  can  but  ask  as  to  the  mechanism 
of  such  preservation  and  transfer  of  ovogenetic  gemmules. 
Of  what  avail  is  it  to  endow  the  mechanic  molecule  with 
a  self-created  omniscience,  omnipotence,  and  infinite  cun- 
ning ?  Does  one  think  thereby  to  get  rid  of  a  hated  tele- 
ology? It  is  only  evidence  of  inexpugnable  obtuseness. 
It  would  seem  more  sensible  to  call  God  by  the  old  name 
than  to  dub  him  Protoplasm. 

Cell-Assimilation. — The  protoplasmic  cell  is  a  food- 
seeking,  food-digesting,  and  food-assimilating  organism. 
A  very  small  part  is  really  the  seat  and  organ  of  life ;  the 
bulk  is  dead  food  or  dead  excreta.  It  is  a  minute  egg,  the 
living  germ  or  dominating-  part  being  a  fractional  part,  the 
rest  a  magazine  of  stored  food  for  the  use  of  the  growing 
and  reproducing  individual.     In  that  universe  of  cells,  the 


LIFE   AND   ITS   PHYSICAL   BASIS.  107 

animal  body,  it  is  much  the  same.  The  actually  living 
protoplasm  is  but  a  part  of  the  total  body  weight.  Just  at 
what  instant  in  the  process  of  assimilation  the  dead  food 
becomes  the  living  protoplasm,  it  is  impossible  to  say,  but 
it  seems  probable  that  true  directive  energy  and  life  only 
fully  inhabit  the  formed  but  yet  functional  tissue.  In  that 
amazing  and  subtle  process  beginning  with  the  crude  food 
at  the  mouth,  and  ending  with  the  most  complex  cell  of 
the  acting,  fixed  tissue,  there  is  a  long,  intricate  series  of 
substances  and  metamorphoses  of  progressively  ascending 
complexity  and  unstable  equilibrium  into  which  life  has 
only  a  partial  and  progressive  ability  to  enter  and  dominate 
to  her  purposes.  The  methods  of  effecting  this  metamor- 
phosis are  towards  the  last  of  the  most  exquisite  delicacy 
and  subtlety ;  but  from  the  first  the  handling  is  less  and 
less  molar  and  mechanical,  ever  more  chemical  and  vital. 
Previous  to  the  final  cell-finishing  and  fitting,  Life  cannot 
have  her  proper  house-warming  and  full  reception,  but 
must  fashion,  and  furnish,  and  manipulate  from  without,  by 
tools  and  agents,  as  it  were,  until  finally,  by  indwelling 
agency,  when  the  living  pump,  the  heart  and  its  adjuncts, 
have  brought  the  almost  completed  food-product  to  the 
living  cell  of  the  fixed  tissue,  mechanics  are  at  an  end,  and 
the  metabolism  is  thenceforward  so  far  hidden  from  our 
deepest  scrutiny. 

Cytogenesis. — An  important  fact  in  reference  to  the 
existence  of  protoplasm  is  that  only  life  can  produce  it. 
There  has  never,  so  far  as  we  can  find  out,  been  a  living 
cell  produced  except  from  a  preexistent  living  cell.  It 
requires  protoplasm,  and  living  protoplasm  to  beget  its 
like.  Nothing  is  deader  than  the  absurd  theory  of  spon- 
taneous generation.  In  the  light  of  the  complex  vibratory 
nature  of  all  organic  compounds,  what  theory  could  be 
more  ludicrous  ?  Even  the  most  empty-headed  of  material- 
ists now  steer  clear  of  the  hypothesis — an  hypothesis  by 


io8  LIFE   AND   ITS   PHYSICAL   BASIS. 

the  way,  absolutely  foundational  to  their  whole  belief  and 
creed.  To  reduce  by  heat  a  lot  of  living  matter,  the 
labyrinthine  intricacy,  and  marvelous  complexity  of  whose 
vibrating  systems  no  human  mind  can  gain  but  the 
faintest  glimpses,  to  a  jumble  of  indiscriminate  atoms,  and 
then  expect  highly  organized  and  living  vibratory  systems 
to  arise  spontaneously,  this  is  the  limit  of  nonsense. 
It  were  as  absurd  to  pulverize  a  thousand  watches  in  a 
mortar  and  expect  much  shaking  to  again  bring  forth 
watches.  Since  life  is  an  independent  force  existing  apart 
from  all  matter,  and  since  it  creates  protoplasm,  it  becomes 
sure  that,  in  a  certain  sense,  spontaneous  generation  did 
at  one  time,  or  first,  occur.  The  absoluteness  of  the  truth, 
oinne  vivum  ex  vivo  is  simply  a  proof  of  the  labor  life  has 
had  to  get  a  foothold  in  matter,  and  the  advantage  in  a 
foothold  once  gained.  However  great,  the  miracle  of 
present  assimilation  is  not  so  great  as  that  oi  first  impres- 
sing inorganic  vibrating  systems  into  protoplasmic  service. 
The  foothold  once  secured  it  is  easier  to  draw  in  mechanic 
systems  and  endow  them  with  life  than  it  is  to  create  anew 
the  lowest  type  of  living  matter.  Hence  the  fundamental 
necessity  and  reason  of  the  great  scientific  truth  of  Evolu- 
tion. It  is  always  easier  for  life  to  proceed  from  present 
capacity  and  advantage  than  to  originate  new  forms. 
Reproduction,  growth,  and  modification  are  easier  than  de 
novo  production.  How  life  conquered  the  first  tremendous 
difficulty  of  once  getting  entrance  to  and  control  of  a 
simple  physical  vibrating  system  is  at  present  beyond  our 
possibility  of  thought.  But  proof  that  life  can  convert 
mechanic  systems  of  vibrating  atoms  into  protoplasm  is 
not  needed :  it  is  the  ever-present  miracle  of  the  growth 
of  organic  forms.  An  oak  germ  in  its  lifetime,  from  purely 
inorganic  materials,  transforms  into  protoplasm  tons  of 
inert  matter,  lifts  thousands  of  tons  a  hundred  feet  high, 
transforms  other  thousands  into  the  semi-living  tissue  we 


LIFE   AND   ITS   PHYSICAL   BASIS.  109 

call  wood,  etc.  The  difficulty  life  has  had  in  first  gaining 
entrance  to  a  mechanic  system — /.  e.,  the  difficulty  of 
spontaneous  generation — has  led  two  acute  thinkers  to 
suppose  living  germs  must  first  have  been  brought  to  our 
planet  from  some  other  by  a  wandering  meteor.  But 
whence  came  life  to  the  other  planet?  The  theory  seems 
to  be  no  more  probable  than  that  the  first  and  lowest 
vegetable  forms  arose  at  life's  touch,  upon  our  earth  in  the 
dim  past.  The  true  "  missing  link  "  would  be  between  the 
highest  mechanic  or  inorganic  molecule  and  the  lowest 
unicellular  vegetable  protoplasmic  cell.  All  that  follows  is 
willingly  granted  to  evolution  spiritually  conceived.  The 
evolutionist  easily  "  sees  men  as  trees  walking."  The 
primal  difficulty  lay  in  catching  nascent  vibratory  changes 
of  the  most  complex  and  unstable  inorganic  geometric 
molecules  and  utilizing  them  for  domiciliation.  We 
cannot  doubt  that  life  was  everywhere  present  and  vividly 
alert  to  grasp  the  opportunity,  because  we  now  stand  in 
dumb  amazement  at  the  tremendous  stretch  and  strain 
everywhere  shown  by  imperfect  and  limited  protoplasm  to 
grow  and  extend  itself  over,  above,  and  through  the  world, 
with  little  less  than  infinite  pertinacity  and  divine  ingenuity. 
The  Cell-nucleus. — The  father  of  the  modern  cell- 
theory,  Theodor  Schwann,  took  his  hint  of  the  function  of 
the  nucleus  from  the  botanist,  M.  Schleiden,  who  had 
observed  that  the  nucleus  is  the  primal  source  of  changes 
and  of  division  of  the  vegetable  cell.  The  preexistence 
of  the  nucleus  in  the  cell  became  thenceforth  his  funda- 
mental principle  in  the  study  of  the  cells  of  animal  life, 
and  he  found  that  all  the  tissues  of  whatever  kind  and 
variety  of  the  animal  body  are  nothing  but  transformed 
cells.  These  truths  are  to-day  incontrovertible.  It  is  in 
the  nucleus  of  the  cell  that  biologic  interest  and  micro- 
chemic  investigation  center.  There  can  be  little  doubt  that 
the  nucleus  is  the  true  living  matter.     Life  has  its  seat 


no  LIFE   AND   ITS  PHYSICAL   BASIS. 

there.  Changes  proceed  thence.  It  controls  the  nutritive 
and  metabolic  changes  of  the  cell,  and  whilst  alive  is 
always  undergoing  these  changes.  In  cell-division  it  is 
the  nucleus  that  first  divides,  "  The  cytasters  and  radiating 
lines  in  the  protoplasm  around  the  poles  of  the  spindle  of 
a  dividing  cell  remind  one  forcibly  of  the  effect  produced 
by  placing  a  magnet  in  the  midst  of  some  iron  filings,  the 
radiating  position  of  the  metallic  fragments  around  the 
poles  of  the  magnet  indicating  the  direction  of  the  lines  of 
force."  We  know  that  the  nucleus  consists  of  a  kind  of 
network  or  sponge-like  cluster  of  fibrils  about  and  through 
which  is  the  nuclear  matrix  of  more  liquid  substance.  The 
nucleoli  may  be  thickened  portions  of  the  fibrillae,  or  they 
may  float  free  in  the  matrix.  The  chemic  construction  of 
the  nucleus  contains  an  indefinite  number  of  highly  complex 
substances,  such  as  nuclein,  plastin,  adenin,  etc.  As  in  all 
such  investigations,  chemic  analysis  is  here  impossible, 
Nuclein,  the  more  important  constituent,  shows  distinct 
chemic  differences  when  derived  from  different  sources. 
No  definite  chemic  unit  exists,  and  it  seems  probable  that 
the  nucleins  are  members  of  the  numerous  class  of  organic 
phosphorus-compounds. 

Cell-nuclei  are  divided  into  two  great  classes,  the  resting 
or  nondividing,  and  the  dividing.  The  term  karyokinesis 
is  given  to  the  series  of  changes  taking  place  in  the  divid- 
ing nucleus.  These  changes  are  too  intricate  and  exten- 
sive, too  little  understood,  to  be  detailed  here.  The  stages 
are  described  by  Waldeyer  as  : — i.  A  resting  nucleus;  2. 
The  skein  or  spirem  stage  ;  3.  That  of  the  appearance  of  the 
achromatic  spindle  ;  4.  The  equatorial  stage  and  formation 
of  the  monaster;  5.  Metakinesis  ;  6.  The  dyaster  or  daugh- 
ter-stage; 7.  The  dispirem  or  daughter-skein  stage  ;  8.  The 
resting  daughter  nuclei.  All  this  is  but  a  manifold  naming 
of  some  of  the  crude  results  of  a  millionfold,  intimate  and 
mysterious  series  of  changes,  of  whose  nature  and  methods 


LIFE   AND   ITS   PHYSICAL   BASIS.  IH 

we  are  profoundly  ignorant.  But  the  central  truth  that 
shines  forth  is  that  the  nucleus  of  the  cell  is  Life's  castle 
of  domiciliation  and  throne  of  power.  Precisely  as  an 
earthly  king  seated  at  the  center  of  government,  by  means 
of  his  prime  ministers  and  deputed  authority,  binds  the 
parts  of  his  nation  into  a  unitary  government,  and  controls 
all  for  the  common  good  of  all,  so  does  Life  rule  the  king- 
dom of  organic  matter  through  the  central  seat  of  govern- 
ment, the  cell-nucleus.  But  one  awfully-suggestive  infer- 
ence comes  from  this : — though  the  lowliest  living  beings, 
vegetable  and  animal,  are  unicellular,  the  bulk  of  organic 
beings  are  multicellular,  and  an  organism  like  the  human 
body  is  composed  of  billions  of  subjugated  cells,  of  self- 
forgetting,  serving,  tireless,  cheerful  slaves.  If  life  can 
only  operate  upon  and  through  matter  by  the  mechanism 
of  the  cell-nucleus,  then  it  follows  that  the  life  of  the  indi- 
vidual cell  is  itself  not  individual.  It  is  itself  the  appearing 
of  a  life  common  and  universal.  The  point  to  be  empha- 
sized is  that  in  the  creation  of  an  organ  and  an  organism, 
each  cell  must  be  moved  to  its  place,  and  perform  its  func- 
tions as  an  unit,  and  by  its  self-motility.  Mechanic  force 
is  utterly  out  of  the  question.  The  organ  is  formed  by  each 
cell's  individual  action.  No  cell  can  act  upon  another.  In 
the  maneuver  of  a  regiment  of  soldiers  it  is  not  an  external 
force,  as  a  wind  or  a  battering  ram,  that  moves  all  to  their 
places.  Each  man  is  moved  from  within  as  a  unit,  domi- 
nated by  the  command  of  the  colonel.  Exactly  so  life 
dominates  the  nucleus  of  each  separate  cell.  The  harmo- 
nizing, ordering  intellect  lies  behind  the  individual  cells  in 
the  unity  and  mentality  of  Life. 

A  reaction  from  the  doctrine  of  the  individuality  of  cells 
has  lately  arisen,  consisting  in  the  attempt  to  conceive  and 
prove  the  body  to  be  not  an  aggregate  of  cells,  but  a  single 
cell-mass.  It  was  felt  that  the  doctrine  of  cell-individuality 
was  fatal   to  mechanicalism,  because  the  body  is  a  unit 


112  LIFE  AND   ITS   PHYSICAL  BASIS. 

dominated  by  a  common  interest  that  reduces  individual 
cells  to  the  complete  servitude  of  design  and  unity.  But 
this  way  of  escape  is  closed  by  the  developmental  history 
of  the  "  cell-mass,"  and  by  the  inexpugnable  fact  that  struc- 
ture proceeds  by  the  harmonization  and  subjection  of  sep- 
arate cells,  each  acting  independently  from  within  its  own 
nuclei.  Cell-unity  and  independence,  so  far  as  other  cells 
are  concerned,  is  an  incontrovertible  fact.  The  unity 
sought  in  the  conception  of  the  organism  as  a  single  huge 
cell  is  a  vain  delusion  :  it  can  only  be  found  in  the  reins  of 
power  and  life  reaching  from  each  individual  cell  to  the 
hidden  hand  of  the  Master-Driver,  Life.  The  cell  is  ser- 
vant of  Purpose  and  Design.  Imperfection,  death,  disease, 
sin,  and  wrong,  are  the  products  of  imperfect  mastery  of  the 
cell,  of  the  insubordination  of  matter;  but  progress,  and 
religion,  and  right,  are  the  names  for  cheerful  cell-subordi- 
nation, for  complete  mastery  by  life,  for  the  quickness  of 
cell-response  to  the  tides  and  will  of  the  great  ocean-master, 
thus  seeking  through  innumerable  bays,  estuaries,  canals, 
and  mechanisms,  to  reach  into  the  inaccessible  lands  of 
matter  and  flood  them  with  its  infinite  fluid  life.  Upon  the 
mechanic  theory,  life  as  a  function  of  matter,  etc.,  there  is 
no  explanation  of  the  subordination  of  cells,  their  literal 
enslavement  as  units  of  structure.  What  possible  mechanic 
force  could  make  a  billion  cells  shape  themselves  into  a 
tube  here,  a  strand  there,  a  sieve-like  wall,  a  contractile 
bundle,  or  a  supporting  structure? 

The  new-born  cell,  as  we  have  seen,  has  all  the  powers 
in  greater  or  less  perfection,  shown  by  any  perfected  or 
differentiated  organ.  It  is  only  and  simply  by  setting 
a  cell  to  do  a  special  and  limited  work  that  we  have 
specialization  of  function  and  production  of  structure  or 
organs.  What  mechanic  force  or  self-created  necessity 
would  sort  out  and  mold  to  particular  use  by  specialization 
and  hypertrophy  one  set  of  cells  to  become  contractors, 


LIFE   AND   ITS   PHYSICAL   BASIS.  II3 

another  membranes,  others  as  containers,  supporters,  trans- 
mitters, secreters,  excreters,  protectors,  reproducers,  and 
the  thousand  other  diversified  fijnctions  performed  by  our 
various  tissues  ?  The  marvelously  intimate  and  subtle  na- 
ture of  life's  manner  of  working  becomes  truly  awful  when 
we  realize  that  all  this  unity  in  diversity  is  reached  by  the 
purposive  agency  of  one  unseen  mental  power  operating 
alone  through  the  nuclei  of  these  countless  billions  of  in- 
dividual cells.  The  work  indeed  is  fiever  mechanical,  never 
by  masses  or  ab  extra,  is  unexceptionally  nonmechanical, 
always  through  units,  and  ab  intra.  Neither  must  we  for- 
get that  not  one  cell  of  all  in  our  whole  organism  can,  as  an 
individual,  have  any  self-satisfaction.  It  is  evermore  doing 
something  for  some  purpose  it  knows  not  of,  evermore  act- 
ing for  some  other  part.  It  points  elsewhere  for  an  ex- 
planation of  its  function,  having  in  its  own  work  no  "  final 
cause  "  as  the  theologians  would  say.  It  is  again  precisely 
so  as  regards  each  organ  and  set  of  organs.  The  digestive 
system  is  working  for  the  circulatory  system,  this  in  turn 
for  all  the  fixed  and  functional  tissues,  the  bones  to  uphold 
the  body,  the  muscles  to  move  it,  the  nervous  system  to 
bind  all  parts  into  unity,  etc.,  etc.  No  cell,  or  organ  or 
tissue  whatever  can  say  that  it  exists  even  in  the  slightest 
degree  for  itself.  Its  excuse  for  being  is  a  reference  else- 
where. If  logic  be  a  science  or  logical  inference  a  mental 
necessity,  this  means  that  the  final  cause  lies  beyond  the 
body  itself,  qua  body,  and  in  that  region  of  unseen  life 
which  exists  behind,  in,  and  through  all  its  objectifications. 
The  Parasitism  of  Animal  Life  and  "  the  Knighting  of 
Matter." — There  seems  to  me  to  be  something  peculiarly 
significant  in  the  robbery  of  the  means  of  its  existence  by 
the  animal  from  the  vegetable  world.  There  is  in  the  first 
place  hardly  an  order  of  lowly  animal  forms  that  does  not 
get  its  food  from  the  plant-world.  The  plant  can  form  a 
living    protoplasm    from    inorganic    materials.      This   the 


114  LIFE   AND   ITS   PHYSICAL   BASIS. 

animal  cannot  do,  and  hence  his  universal  appropriation 
of  vegetable  protoplasm,  ruthless  and  continuous,  for  his 
own  selfish  needs.  Beyond  this  kind  of  universal  pillage 
the  animal  world,  below  man,  does  not  go.  But  with  the 
entrance  of  the  human  mind  the  wholesale  system  of  rob- 
bery is  extended  a  thousand  fold.  In  the  first  place,  he,  as 
a  meat-eater,  adds  to  his  own  robbery  of  food  directly  from 
the  vegetable  world,  by  a  tremendous  slaughtering  of 
inferior  animal  forms.  These  last  by  his  purposive  breeding 
and  systematic  care,  are  increased  in  numbers  a  thousand 
fold,  and  thus  is  organized  and  increased  the  great  system 
of  attack  upon  the  plant-world  and  reckless  appropriation 
of  its  labor  and  stored  products.  The  flesh  of  animals  is 
concentrated,  potentialized  vegetable  protoplasm.  In  the 
second  place,  man,  not  content  with  food,  descends  with  an 
almost  savage  fury  upon  the  world  of  plant  life  for  other 
means  of  self-gratification.  Continents  of  forests  are  cut 
down  to  furnish  him  wood,  and  the  stored-up  forests  of 
millions  of  past  years  are  being  exhausted  for  fuel ;  a 
large  part  of  the  cultivable  land  of  the  globe  is  used  to 
give  him  clothing,  either  directly,  as  cotton,  linen,  etc.,  or 
indirectly,  as  wool,  silk,  etc.  To  enumerate  the  things 
wrenched  by  man  from  the  vegetable  world  mediately  or 
immediately,  and  from  the  original  intent,  would  require  a 
cyclopedia,  and  would  indicate  the  physical  bases  of  most 
of  our  civilization.  The  commerce  of  the  world  is  the 
almost  unique  result  of  this  "  plan  of  campaign." 

All  this  seems  at  first  sight  to  be  so  inherently  wrong 
and  unjust  that  in  view  of  the  deep  unity  of  all  life,  whether 
plant  or  animal,  one  wonders  if  the  world  of  plant-life  will 
submit  forever.  Is  some  long-stored  revenge  in  waiting 
for  mankind?  Will  not  retribution  overtake  him  for  such 
a  world-wide  million-year-long  organized  system  of  reckless 
plunder?  In  the  destruction  of  forests  a  retributive  justice 
is  manifest  in  the  havoc  and  devastation  of  waterways  and 


LIFE  AND   ITS  PHYSICAL  BASIS.  115 

valleys  through  which  the  unstored  rainfall  rushes  to  the 
ocean,  leaving  drouth  and  field-denudation  as  the  aftermath. 
In  the  conflagration  of  cities  man  is  punished  for  building 
with  robbed  wood  instead  of  the  more  fitting  inorganic 
materials  he  would  have  used  had  he  not  been  so  furiously 
greedy  and  hasty.  The  wars  and  bloodshed  that  make  up 
the  subject  matter  of  history*  are  all  conditioned  upon  the 
hell-driven  determination  to  wrench  some  natural  advantage 
of  climate,  some  form  of  natural  or  acquired  wealth — all, 
at  last,  vegetable  wealth — from  another  robber-possessor. 
Slavery,  and  its  modern  form,  industrialism,  are  examples 
of  the  same  fact.  Civilized  wealth  is  masked  slavery,  the 
toilers  being  the  direct  robbers,  the  millionaires  being  simply 
the  slave-drivers  and  captains  of  the  bandits  and  caravans. 
Royalty,  official  and  social  position,  "  protective "  and 
prohibitive  tariffs,  monopolies,  trusts,  et 'hoc  genus  omne,a.re 
schemes  and  labyrinthine  deviltries  whereby  mankind 
subjects  itself  to  men,  and  all  go  a  hunting  to  loot  the 
magazines  of  force  created  by  grass  and  leaf — by  the 
mysterious  vegetable  divinity,  Chlorophyl.  In  the 
diseases  of  civilization  there  lurks  an  evident  retributive 
justice.  In  prostitution,  hysteria,  drunkenness,  vice,  in 
insanity,  blindness,  deaf-mutism,  trampism,  in  the  crowd- 
diseases,  in  syphilis,  in  phthisis,  etc.,  etc.,  the  discerning 
eye  runs  back  along  the  lines  of  motive  and  causation 
until  the  fundamental  origin  of  all  is  found  in  the  selfish 
greed,  laziness,  and  desire  to  enjoy  without  work,  that  have 
caused  men  to  prey  upon  the  vegetable  world,  to  congregate 
in  cities,  to  demand  and  not  give,  to  scorn  while  using  the 
very  sources  of  life.  Lastly  in  the  new  knowledge  of  the 
role  more  and  progressively  played  by  microorganisms  in 

*  "  History,  from  one  end  to  the  other  relates  simply  of  wars.  But  the 
origin  of  all  war  is  the  desire  to  thieve;  hence  Voltaire  justly  says,  '  Dans 
toutes  les  guenes,  il  ne  s'agit  que  de  voler.'  This  furnishes  the  material  for  the 
world's  history,  and  its  heroic  deeds." — Schopenhauer. 


n6  LIFE  AND  ITS  PHYSICAL  BASIS. 

the  development  of  disease  and  their  influence  upon  civilized 
life  we  catch  a  truly  awful  glimpse  of  vegetable  revenge. 
Because  the  bacterium.bacillus,  micrococcus,  and  spirillum, 
the  yeasts,  molds  and  fungi,  that  in  scores  of  families  and 
types,  and  in  biUions  of  ever-present  numbers  hover  about 
us,  infesting  the  air,  food,  and  water  we  drink,  penetrating 
every  organ  of  the  body,  the  causes  direct  or  indirect  of 
most  all  deaths  and  mortal  diseases — these  microbes  are 
little  plants.  The  warning  and  retribution  may  be  plainly 
seen  in  these  facts ;  the  punishment  is  the  fitting  and 
natural  consequence  of  the  sin.  Because  of  the  fact  that 
all  organic  forms  are  incarnations  of  one  unitary  life-force, 
there  should  not  be  a  perpetual  war  of  one  great  order 
upon  another.  They  who  work  lovingly  in  the  fields  and 
forests  are  given  ungrudgingly  the  wealth  of  the  vegetable 
world, — and  they  are  free  from  the  above-mentioned  diseases, 
evils,  vices,  and  punishments  of  the  "  civilized  man."  The 
vegetable  world  says,  "  ask  and  ye  shall  receive  " ;  she  gives 
with  a  complement  of  love  and  health  to  those  who  live 
with  her;  to  those  that  plunder  and  ravish,  she  sends  her 
little  warriors  and  allies,  and  lo !  consumption*  and 
zymotic  diseases  destroy  her  destroyers.f 

*  The  bacillus  tuberculosis  only  settles  in  lungs  weakened  or  insufficiently 
developed  ;  chest-expansion  and  exercise, — proper  lung-development — is  the 
certain  prophylaxis  of  pulmonary  tuberculosis. 

*  The  plainly- marked  tendency  of  modern  bacteriologic  and  patholog- 
ic research  is  to  prove  that  the  microorganism  of  specific  diseases  is  not 
primarily  causative,  nor  even  necessary  to  the  disease.  It  seems  to  be  certain 
that  the  cocci  and  bacilli  would  not  have  settled  in  the  tissue  had  the  tissue 
not  been  previously  diseased.  The  tissue  was  unfit  for  healthy  life  and  gave 
hostage  to  the  little  vegetable  forms.  The  weakness  of  the  victim  invited  the 
assault.  The  chemico-physical  conditions  of  the  organism  were  tending  to  the 
disorganization  that  the  advent  of  the  microorganism  hastened.  It  is  more 
and  more  plain  that  the  microbe  is  a  kind  of  a  ferment,  innocent  enough  were 
there  not  present  substances  in  such  unstable  equilibrium  that  they  were  on  the 
point  of  dissolution.  The  pathogenic  microbe  is  the  exploding  fuse ;  the 
powder  or  dynamite  must  preexist. 


LIFE   AND   ITS   PHYSICAL   BASIS.  117 

This  systematic  plundering  by  humanity  is  founded  upon 
a  wonderful  fact  that  I  have  ventured  to  call  the  Knighting 
of  Matter.  According  to  medieval  custom  when  a  man 
had  once  been  made  a  knight  he  was  by  the  ceremony 
raised  out  of  the  common  mass  of  mankind,  and  not  even 
by  his  own  fault  or  will  could  he  ever  be  again  degraded 
to  the  common  level.  A  glory  or  grace  had  become  his 
forever.  In  the  same,  or  in  a  far  more  real  way,  matter — 
crude  chemic  elements — are  caught  up  by  life  and,  once 
stamped  with  her  seal,  become  ennobled  with  utility  and 
significance  never  possessed  by  matter  not  so  knighted. 
Not  even  the  metals  can  become  of  any  use  to  us  without 
some  metamorphosis  by  life.  And  except  the  metals 
there  is  nothing  that  makes  the  world  enjoyable  or  useful 
unless  it  have  been  knighted  by  life.  The  veriest  rag  or 
bit  of  leather  of  the  dust-heap  is  provocative  of  interest 
and  rich  with  significance  to  the  eye  that  loves  life's  ways 
and  her  faintest  footprints,  because  the  mind  runs  back 
through  all  metamorphoses  and  modifications  to  the  living 
organism  of  which  this  was  once  a  vital  part  and  where  it 
gained  all  the  quality  that  makes  it  precious  and  useful  to 
man.  All  our  clothing,  houses,  furnishings,  coal,  foods  and 
true  valuables,  are  useful  to  us  because  life  once  molded  her 
somacules  and  cells  into  structural  forms  and  then  endowed 
them  with  a  power  and  plasticity  and  utility  and  beauty,  ot 
which  they  can  never  be  divested.  Life's  intellect  is  dis- 
played in  their  wondrous  order  and  ingenuity,  her  powers 
in  their  durability,  her  goodness  in  their  perfect  service- 
ableness,  her  love  in  the  bounteousness  of  the  gift,  her 
grace  in  the  beauty  and  charm  ever  lingering  about  them. 
The  Significance  of  Structure  or  Organization. — 
There  is,  we  have  said,  a  class  of  pseudoscientists  who 
aver  that  life  and  mentality  are  the  products  of  organiza- 
tion. The  sullenness  and  the  conspiracy  of  silence  with 
which  these  wiseacres  receive  the  repetitive  demonstrations 


Ii8  LIFE  AND   ITS   PHYSICAL  BASIS. 

of  there  illogicality  is  both  pitiable  and  amusing.  In  all 
the  life-histories  of  every  organic  being  that  has  lived  on 
the  earth  there  was  never  an  exception  to  the  rule  that 
function  precedes  structure,  and  life  antedates  organization. 
It  is  forgotten  that  numerous  classes  of  living  animals  are 
organless  throughout  their  entire  lives,  and  that  these  non- 
structural masses  of  living  jelly  show  every  one  of  the  six 
great  types  of  physiologic  function.  They  possess  i. 
Contractibility ;  2.  Irritability  or  response  to  stimulus;  3. 
Respiration;  4.  Assimilation,  or  anabolism ;  5.  Excretion 
or  katabolism ;  6.  Reproduction.  All  physiologic  powers 
and  processes  of  the  highest  animal  body  are  comprised 
under  these  terms,  and  in  no  way  go  beyond  them.  Nay, 
more — the  simple  protoplasmic  cell  or  the  most  primitive 
individual  living  element  also  possesses  these  functions. 
If  it  were  not  so,  where  would  the  organ  or  animal  body 
get  these  qualities  ?  The  organ  and  body  are  simply  com- 
binations of  the  cells.  "  Nihil  in  molecule  quid  non  prius  in 
atoina."  A  multitude  cannot  exhibit  qualities  not  possessed 
by  the  individuals.  Evolution  cannot  produce  what  was 
not  first  involuted.  Development  cannot  bring  out  what 
was  not  there  to  develop.  *  The  sensitiveness  of  proto- 
plasm is  said  to  explain  all.  It  certainly  does  when  "  sen- 
sitiveness "  is  "  explained,"  and  when  protoplasm  is  "  ex- 
plained," and  when  a  world  of  other  inexplainable  things  are 
not  slyly  hidden  under  these  terms, — just  as  the  old-fash- 

*  Merely  to  call  the  consciousness  ''nascent"  will  not  serve  our  turn. 
It  is  true  that  the  word  signifies  not  yet  quite  born,  and  so  seems  to  form  a 
sort  of  bridge  between  existence  and  nonenity.  But  that  is  a  verbal  quibble. 
The  fact  is  that  discontinuity  comes  in  if  a  new  nature  comes  in  at  all.  The 
quantity  of  the  latter  is  quite  immaterial.  The  girl  in  "  Midshipman  Easy  " 
could  not  excuse  the  illegitimacy  of  her  child  by  saying  "  it  was  a  very  small 
one."  And  consciousness,  however  small,  is  an  illegitimate  birth  in  any  phil- 
osophy that  starts  without  it,  and  yet  professes  to  explain  all  facts  by  continu- 
ous evolution.  If  evolution  is  to  work  smoothly,  consciousness  in  some  shape 
must  have  been  present  at  the  very  origin  of  things. — Professor  James. 


LIFE   AND    ITS   PHYSICAL   BASIS.  119 

ioned  piano  tuners  swept  all  the  discords  of  the  key-board 
into  one  to-be-avoided  octave.  Instinct  and  the  higher 
functions  of  nerve-structures  are  glibly  explained  as  exten- 
sions of  reflex  action.  But  reflex  action  is  itself  a  term  for 
a  multitude  of  mysteries ;  among  which  are  the  recipient 
end-organ,  the  mechanism  for  transforming  external  into 
neural  force,  the  conducting  nerve,  the  "  reflecting  "  gang- 
lion, or  center,  the  reconduction  of  the  message,  the  trans- 
fer of  the  same  to  the  muscle  or  receiving  organ,  the  resul- 
tant activity  of  the  last,  etc.  Every  organ  is  formed  before 
it  is  used,  and  many  organs  find  no  explanation  until  adult 
life  shows  their  use.  Wherever  purpose,  there  is  mind. 
What  power  could  form  an  organ  for  use  twenty  years 
after,  except  a  power  that  foresaw  and  foreknew  the  after- 
use  ?  I  have  a  profound  reverence  for  Darwin,  and  heartily 
believe  in  Evolution,  but  the  explanation  of  the  modifica- 
tions of  organisms  by  so-called  "  natural  selection  "  is 
already  outgrown,  thoroughly  unscientific  and  inadequate.* 
An  Indian  pictograph  represents  the  Great  Spirit  quite  as 
well.  It  is  a  clumsy,  crude  device  of  materialism  to  avoid 
acknowledgment  of  an  intelligent,  seeing,  and  designing 
life-force  within  an  organism,  that  not  only  created  the 
organs  but  ever  adapts  them  to  each  exigency  and  envir- 
onmental change  that  arises.  Life  that  precedes  and 
creates  the  organs  must  be  wiser  and  more  expert  than  the 
instruments  she  creates.  Organization  cannot  explain 
mentality,  but  mentality  explains  the  organs  as  tools  and 
helps.  Such  a  tool  is  the  brain,  created  by  Life  in  the 
womb,  with  mechanisms  and  preadaptations  that  do  not 
find  their  full  functional  fruition  for  many  years.  Was  the 
superb  ingenuity  and  power  that  thus  in  the  dark  and  long 
in  advance  of  need,  made  and  located  those  million  ganglia 


*  See  e.g.,  Syme,  on  the   Modification  of  Organisms,  where  some  of  the 
arguments  against  Natural  Selection  are  clearly  stated. 


I20  LIFE  AND  ITS   PHYSICAL  BASIS. 

and  nuclei,  interlacing  them  with  many  million  insulated 
commissural  fibers,  with  astounding  delicacy  arranging, 
forefeeling,  planning,  fixing — so  that  when  the  infinitely 
varying  stimulus  should  come  from  without  there  should 
be  its  correspondent  receiving  and  answering  mechanism, 
— was  this  power  inferior  in  intellect  and  vision  to  the 
machine  it  had  created  ? 

Much  is  made  by  materialism  of  the  dependence  of  men- 
tal phenomena  upon  corporeal  conditions,  the  mental  in- 
fluence of  disease  and  drugs,  the  loss  or  change  of  mental 
conditions  by  cerebral  injury,  etc.,  etc.  The  whole  point  is 
poorly  taken,  and  beside  the  mark.  The  criticism  may  be 
freely  admitted  to  carry  so  far  as  it  goes,  but  it  applies  only 
to  the  expression  of  thought,  not  to  its  generation, — and 
moreover,  to  its  expression  by  a  certain  mechanism.  Or- 
ganization is  differentiation  of  function  ;  just  as  in  a  highly 
differentiated  society,  if  all  the  watchmakers  were  per- 
manently sick  or  injured,  there  would  be  no  watches  made 
or  repaired,  so  a  disabled  or  diseased  part  of  a  nervous 
system  must  affect  the  working  of  the  whole  nervous  sys- 
tem. But  the  work  of  the  nervous  system  is  not  to  "  secrete 
thought"  but  is  (in  part)  to  express  it  in  a  certain  way,  and 
as  the  society  can  teach  other  members  to  become  watch- 
makers, so  new  nervous  systems  can  be  created  by  Life, 
and  in  repair  can  teach  other  parts  of  cerebral  substance 
to  learn  to  do  the  work  of  an  injured  part. 

Then  what  shall  be  said  from  the  materialistic  stand- 
point of  this  vis  medicatrix  natures  ?  What  a  "  stunning  "  fact 
it  is!  To  repair  the  injury  of  the  "organ  of  thought" — 
is  that  not  proof  of  thought  and  ingenuity  beyond  and  be- 
hind organization?  The  wisdom  of  the  unconscious 
exceeds  by  infinity  the  wisdom  of  the  conscious. 

All  great  thought  comes  unbidden,  seems  to  be  an  in- 
spiration born  out  of  a  Sea  of  Mind  in  filling  and  uphold- 
ing  the  wavelet  of   our    finite  mind.      The   great    mind 


LIFE  AND   ITS   PHYSICAL  BASIS.  t2l 

of  Life  created  the  little  mind  of  our  consciousness — 
creating  first  the  instrument  of  the  nervous  system  as  an 
aid  to  itself  in  its  work.  The  brain  may  be  the  organ  of 
speech  and  action,  but  of  thought — No !  Its  utterance  is 
comparable  only  to  the  babblings  and  lispings  of  child- 
hood, the  not-understood  mimicries  of  words  that  the 
parent  taught  and  alone  understands  in  full.  Languages, 
literatures,  and  philosophies,  are  the  child's  attempts  to 
learn  the  profound  hieroglyphics  of  universal  life,  the 
little  Teachings  out  toward  a  conscious  understanding  of 
the  mighty  thought  of  the  silent  and  invisible  Lord,  who, 
before  he  created,  understood  the  mechanism  of  our  little 
understandings. 

Imperfect  Incarnation. — Evidences  of  Life's  inability 
to  adequately  subjugate  matter  are  everywhere  manifest. 
The  will  and  desire  are  clearly  patent  but  the  inability  is 
also  pathetically  certain.  Everywhere  there  is  the  heroic 
struggle  against  the  intractableness  of  the  instrument. 
Perhaps  the  most  obvious  example  consists  in  the  fact  that 
the  material,  the  inorganic  tools,  serve  only  a  temporary 
use.  As  the  old  material  is  used,  it  loses  its  usefulness, 
and  new  supplies  have  to  be  grasped.  Life  catches  up  bil- 
lions of  force-containing  molecules,  extracts  their  energy 
and  again  throws  them  aside.  The  chemic  elements  of  our 
body  are  being  changed  every  instant,  new  supplies  being 
brought  in  as  ceaselessly.  A  great  stream  of  materials  is 
thus  passing  through  the  organism.  It  is  said  five-million 
red-blood  corpuscles  die  with  every  breath  we  take.  The 
organism  persists  unchanged  because  it  has  a  changeless 
substratum  of  immateriality  to  confer  continuity  upon  it. 
But  material  forms  having  no  permanency  are  in  continual 
flux.  They  will  not  be  held  beyond  a  passing  second. 
Hence  the  tremendous  expenditure  that  hunger  entails — 
hunger,  the  evidence  of  matter's  fearful  fickleness,  and  its 
satisfaction,  the  evidence  of  Life's  wonderful  energy.     In 


122  LIFE  AND   ITS   PHYSICAL   BASIS. 

the  whole  organic  world  this  imperious  necessity  must  ab- 
sorb nine-tenths  of  the  attention  and  energy  of  life.  Like 
some  terrible  Louis  the  Fourteenth,  matter  will  compound 
with  life  only  on  the  condition  of  demanding  some  80  or 
90  per  cent,  of  the  total  income. 

Secondly,  consider  what  death  means  and  how  Life  con- 
quers or  evades  it.  Death  is  plainly  but  another  sacrifice  to 
the  insatiable  and  mutinous  servant.  In  youth  Life  has  the 
material  "  well  in  hand,"  but  soon  the  jealousy  of  matter 
grows  and  demands  all.  The  bones  grow  brittle,  the  mus- 
cles stiffen,  weaken,  wither ;  the  brain  and  nervous  tissues 
hold  out  best,  Life  having  a  more  direct  and  firmer  grasp 
upon  them,  but  even  they  become  easily  tired.  Finally, 
though  usually  happening  if  no  disease  arise,  or  special 
organ  be  attacked,  life  seems  literally  choked  or  squeezed 
out  of  its  home  and  death  is  conqueror.  But  Life  has  been 
cunning  and  active  long  before  this :  with  the  shrewdest 
foresight  and  ingenuity  the  dread  event  has  been  fore- 
fended.  Far  in  advance,  by  the  most  intricate  and  strange 
mechanism,  Life  has  gathered  to  a  focus  a  representative 
bit  of  her  best  and  most  perfect  physical  material,  and 
uniting  it  to  another  bit  of  similar  material  elsewhere  con- 
tributed, to  give  it  vigor,  care,  nourishment,  time  for 
growth,  etc.,  etc., — the  whole  wonderful  production  of  sex 
and  all  thereto  appertaining  being  one  of  the  prerequisites 
— she  soon  has  ready  a  new  being,  new  in  appearance  but 
yet  a  transfiguration  and  perpetuation  of  the  old — and 
Death  is  thwarted !  Avaricious  matter  takes  the  old  body, 
there  is  a  better  already  assumed.  Le  rot  est  mort,  vive  le 
roil  But  the  note  of  victory  and  the  charm  of  ever- 
renewed  youth  must  not  blind  us  to  the  fact  of  the  tre- 
mendous expensiveness  of  the  process,  and  that  at  last  it 
is  all  a  makeskift,  an  escape  from  a  fatal  calamity  by  super- 
human exertion  and  ingenuity.  It  is  a  hairbreadth  escape, 
effected  with  shameful  loss  of  dignity  and  even  downright 


LIFE   AND   ITS   PHYSICAL  BASIS.  123 

trickiness.  One  of  the  steps  of  the  device  is  such  a  paltry, 
and  filthy  evidence  of  desperation  that  no  better  proof  of 
Life's  finiteness  is  needed.  It  is  at  once  the  world's  joke 
and  the  world's  tragedy,  and  must  ever  so  remain.  Each 
of  us  is  Sancho  and  the  Don  rolled  in  one;  we  can  only  jeer 
at  ourselves  while  weeping  with  self-pity,  and  in  this  mood 
we  know  not  whether  to  offer  Life  our  admiration  or  com- 
miseration. Sympathy  for  the  hero  in  distress  is  embittered 
by  the  plight  he  has  put  us  in. 

Yet  another  evidence  of  the  power  of  the  servant  over 
the  master  is  a  set  of  facts  that  always- delights  the  hearts 
of  the  gentlemen  who  continuously  repeat,  "  This  will 
never  do  !  "  Nothing  pleases  a  class  of  God's  critics  better 
than  a  supposed  proof  of  his  incompetence  or  blundering.* 
They  gloat  over  the  persistent  reproduction  of  semiatro- 
phied,  disused,  or  functionless  organs,  the  supposed  poverty 
of  power  or  device,  the  stupidly-continued  creation  of  the 
useless.  The  pleasure  which  these  folks  have  betrays  the 
animus  too  plainly  : — "  The  developmental  history  of  the 
kidneys"  is  much  made  of,  and  "the  process  of  converting 
an  hermaphrodite  worm  into  a  warm-blooded  animal." 
"  The  six  obsolete  canals  belonging  to  the  alimentary  canal 
alone;"  "the  argument  for  design  utterly  put  out  of  the 
court  by  the  awkwardness  of  the  whole  plan,"  "  the  blind 
effort  of  nature," — sentences  like  these  make  one  wonder 
where  the  critic  got  his  power  of  criticism.  He  talks 
as  if  he  were  not  himself  ex  hypothesi  a  product  of  the 
"awkwardness  "  "  undesign,"  and  "  blind  effort."  Can  the 
stream  rise  higher  than  the  source  ?  whence  the  power  of  a 
mechanic  evolutionary  product  to  criticise  and  scorn  the 
evolutionary  process  ?  The  impertinence  of  fools  is  amus- 
ing when  it  is  not  disgusting.     There  can  be  no  doubt  of 


*  One  of  the  most  unblushing  of  these  upstart  impertinents  is,  strange  to  say, 
a  woman.     So  far  have  we  come !     Corruptio  optima  pessima. 


124  LIFE  AND  ITS   PHYSICAL  BASIS. 

the  fact  that  matter  has  inherent  necessities  and  laws,  and 
that  Life  has  to  adapt  herself  to  them  and  use  or  evade 
them  as  best  she  can.  It  is  said  that  there  is  a  disease  of 
the  human  prostate  in  which  there  occurs  the  secretion  of 
chalk-like  substances — the  late  resurrection  of  an  inter- 
rupted habit  and  a  far-away  memory  of  egg-shell  days ! 
But  in  health  there  is  no  pathologic  recurrence  to  the 
habits  of  a  million  years  ago,  and  the  fact  as  a  whole, 
seems  to  me  to  be  greatly  to  life's  credit.  When  she  has 
control,  that  is,  can  keep  health,  she  can,  as  it  were,  keep 
down  the  old  habit  that  seeks  to  arise.  It  is  likewise  to 
her  honor  that  there  are  not  more  thymus  glands,  atavisms, 
functionless  muscles,  and  survived  relics  of  other  times. 
Life  has  much  to  do  to  create  new  organs  in  response  to 
new  needs,  to  forefend  new  dangers,  to  look  after  her  many, 
many  children — a  tirelessly  busy  mother  ! — Mayn't  we  ex- 
cuse an  occasional  slip  or  doze  ?  Don't  we  love  her  all  the 
more,  all  the  more  vitally  and  really,  that  she  is  not  omnis- 
cient and  omnipotent  ? 

The  preservation  of  the  delicate  changelessness  of  the 
body-temperature,  of  which  we  have  spoken,  is  another 
task  imposed  by  matter,  that  keeps  Life  sleeplessly  watch- 
ing and  alert.  In  fact,  the  history  of  Evolution  is  but 
an  enumeration  of  the  difficulties  Life  has  always  been  en- 
countering in  thje  work  of  incarnation.  In  thinking  how 
terrible  these  have  been  we  can  but  feel  gratitude  welling 
in  our  hearts  when  we  see  victorious  Life  crowning  success 
with  vital  abundance,  when  play  and  laughter  override 
tragedy  and  tears,  and  when  beauty  tops  utility.* 

*  "  *  *  *  a  force  sublime  which  moves  to  good. 
Only  its  laws  endure. 

"  This,  is  its  touch  upon  the  blossomed  rose, 
The  fashion  of  its  hand  shaped  lotus-leaves ; 
In  dark  soil  and  silence  of  the  .seeds, 
The  robe  of  spring  it  weaves. 


LIFE  AND   ITS  PHYSICAL   BASIS.  125 

Individuality  and  Personal  Identity. — It  maybe  asked, 
in  view  of  the  indwelling  of  a  common  life  and  its  action 
only  through  cell-nuclei,  if  this  fact  does  not  render  doubt- 
ful and  finally  destroy  any  belief  in  that  hypothetically  in- 
destructible peculiarity  of  character  we  call  Personality  or 
Identity,  and  in  its  unlimited  continuance.  Happily  there 
can  be  but  one  answer.  The  insane  love  of  self,  the  hyper- 
trophy of  individuality  which  characterized  the  Romans, 
and  is  now  again  attaining  a  furious  exaggeration,  is  to  be 
looked  upon  as  a  sad  accident  of  the  struggle  for  existence. 
The  whole  fact  is  once  again  a  corollary  of  the  difficulty 
Life  has  had  to  get  and  to  keep  its  foothold  in  matter.     To 


"  That,  is  its  painting  on  the  glorious  clouds, 

And  these  its  emeralds  on  the  peacock's  train ; 
It  hath  its  stations  in  the  stars ;  its  slaves 
In  lightning,  wind  and  rain. 

"  Out  of  the  dark  it  wrought  the  heart  of  man, 

Out  of  dull  shells  the  pheasant's  penciled  neck  ; 
Ever  at  toil  it  brings  to  loveliness 
All  ancient  wrath  and  wreck. 

"  The  gray  eggs  in  the  golden  sun-bird's  nest 
Its  treasures  are,  the  bee's  six-sided  cell 
Its  honey-pot;  the  ant  wots  of  its  ways, 
The  white  dove  knows  them  well, 

"  It  spreadeth  forth  for  flight  the  eagle's  wings 

What  time  she  beareth  home  her  prey ;  it  sends 
The  she-wolf  to  her  cubs ;  for  unloved  things 
It  findeth  food  and  friends. 

"  It  is  not  marred  nor  stayed  in  any  use ; 

All  liketh  it ;  the  sweet,  white  milk  it  brings 
To  mother's  breasts ;  it  bringeth  the  white  drops  too. 
Wherewith  the  young  snake  stings. 

"  This  is  its  work  upon  the  things  ye  see ; 

The  unseen  things  are  more ;   men's  hearts  and  minds, 
The  thoughts  of  people  and  their  ways  and  wills. 
Those,  too,  the  great  law  binds." 


126  LIFE   AND   ITS   PHYSICAL  BASIS. 

preserve  her  forms  against  destructive  tendencies  and  dan- 
gers, to  give  each  individual  animal  such  vantage-ground 
as  would  insure  the  preservation  of  self  and  the  propaga- 
tion of  offspring,  and  so  of  her  own  incarnation  in  matter, 
Life  has  had  so  to  exaggerate  the  disease  of  individuality, 
so  to  overfill  each  organism  with  the  instinct  of  self-preser- 
vation and  ruthless  appropriation  of  others'  rights,  that  we 
have  the  cosmically-wide  facts  of  parasitism,  the  carnivora- 
outfit  of  instincts  and  implements,  Louis  Fourteenth's, 
modern  millionaires,  and  the  pathology  of  civilization.  One 
of  these  most  curious  of  morbid  products  consists  of  the 
fact  of  founding  religions,  with  their  systems  of  rewards 
and  punishments,  upon  this  instinct  of  self-preservation. 
The  hunger  for  an  everlasting  continuance  of  existence,  ot 
a  partial,  narrow,  undeveloped  peculiarity  of  type — personal 
identity  or  immortality — will  some  time  come  to  be  looked 
upon  as  a  strange  atavistic  hypertrophy  and  perversion  of 
a  passing  phase  of  Evolution.  Our  true  welfare  consists, 
of  course,  in  becoming  unindividual,  impersonal,  in  slough- 
ing off  the  accidents  of  development,  in  eating  our  way 
out  of  the  pupa-stage  of  individual  personality  into  the 
psychic  life  of  the  universal  personality.  A  rigid  analysis 
of  the  origin  and  qualities  of  the  peculiarities  we  name 
identity  or  individuality,  shows  that  they  are  due  solely  to 
the  accidents  of  Life-incarnation.  Individuality — the  path- 
ologic variety  of  carnivora — is  a  disagreeable  consequence 
of  a  great  difficulty,  the  outcome  of  the  stringent  condi- 
tions matter  places  upon  Life.  Corporeal  beauty  illustrates 
the  same  law.  A  beautiful  face  is  one  free  from  marring 
imperfections,  and  vividly  expressive  of  life.  "  Homeliness  " 
results  from  individuality  of  feature,  imbalance  and  insub- 
ordination of  parts,  incoordinations  and  imperfections  of 
incarnation.  Character  and  personality  become  beautiful 
only  in  so  far  as  they  approach  perfection — that  is,  in  so  far 
as  they  are  unindividual.     Individuality  consists  in  selfish- 


LIFE  AND   ITS   PHYSICAL  BASIS.  I27 

ness,  peculiarity,  and  imperfections.  The  more  one  is 
greedy  for  personal  immortality  the  less  he  merits  it,  the 
less  he  has  worthy  of  eternal  perpetuation.  Great  minds 
and  good  hearts  are  not  worried  about  their  personal  iden- 
tity and  after-death  continuance.  They  know  they  cannot 
help  continuing — not  however  as  singing  automatons  or 
bundles  of  imperfections  and  desires,  but  as  the  common 
life  that  lives  outside  the  laws  of  time  and  space.  Love  of 
individuality  is  love  of  self,  and  of  separateness  from  the 
source  of  all  life.  The  truest  religion  seeks  freedom  from 
self  and  union  with  the  overstanding  life.  One  must  lose  his 
Hfe  to  find  it.  The  common  belief  in  immortality  is  the 
voice  of  the  impudence  and  control  of  matter.  It  is 
the  machine  asserting  superiority  over  the  mechanic  and 
the  engineer.  The  only  permanency  and  enduring  unity 
of  an  animal  organism  consists  in  the  life  or  logos-will  that 
made  and  upholds  it,  not  in  the  stream  of  matter  ever  fly- 
ing through  it.  Individuality  inheres  in  and  is  begotten  of 
organization ;  when  organization  ends  individuality  ends, 
though  the  life  that  created  organization  by  no  means  ends. 
The  Basis  of  Ethics  and  Religion  consists  simply  in 
this  fact  that  I  have  been  illustrating,  the  fact  of  Life's 
purposes  and  will  struggling  against  the  difficulties  of 
incarnation.  Right  conduct  consists  in  adopting  Life's 
plans  as  our  own,  and  working  with  and  for  her.  Most  of 
the  sin  and  wrong  and  suffering  come  from  the  obstinacy, 
the  over-control  of  matter,  the  imperfect  incarnation  of  Life, 
and  the  sacrifices  she  has  to  make  to  succeed  at  all.  If 
we  aid  her  we  are  good ;  if  we  side  with  matter  we  sin. 
The  principle  cleaves  straight  through  all  doubtful  questions 
of  casuistry  and  conduct,  and  offers  a  touchstone  of  infalli- 
ble certainty  and  clearness.  Every  ethical  rule  or  the 
judgment  of  any  specific  act  brought  to  this  tribunal  is 
settled  with  swift  accuracy.  It  decides  peremptorily, 
smashing  many  a  fond  and  cherished  conventionalism  and 


128  LIFE   AND   ITS   PHYSICAL   BASIS. 

legalized  injustice,  elevating  to  honor  many  quiet  and 
ignored  sources  and  principles  of  right.  A  thousand 
illustrations  that  must  be  passed  by  here,  at  once  flash 
before  the  eyes.  The  principle  holds  as  true  and  unfailing 
in  questions  of  religion.  No  love  was  possible  to  a  sup- 
posed omniscient  and  omnipotent  deity ;  but  with  the 
struggling  Life  of  our  life  we  can  feel  a  kinship  and 
sympathy.  If  our  adoption  of  Life's  will  as  our  own  be 
vivified  by  fervent  love,  the  fulness  of  religion  is  ours,  and 
we  are  in  veriest  fact  the  Sons  of  God,  Sonship,  of  course, 
presupposes  the  brotherhood  of  all  men — nay  more,  of  all 
organic  forms.  The  absorbing  interest  of  the  civilized 
world  in  evolution  and  biologic  study  is  but  a  forerunner 
of  the  great  recognition  and  atonement  that  must  follow. 
We  are  beginning  to  hear  the  whispering  that  is  by  and  by 
to  become  an  ever-sounding  voice,  the  faint,  long-ignored 
calling,  swelling  to  command,  of  the  Father  of  Life  and  of 
forgotten  brothers — Tat  twam  asi ! — This  art  Thou  ! 

Pessimism  and  Optimism. — The  acknowledgment  of 
the  spirituality  and  fatherhood  of  life  has  been  stifled  by 
the  unscientific  inference  that  any  such  admission  carried 
with  it  the  sweeping  belief  in  the  omnipotence  and  omni- 
science of  God.  It  has  been  keenly  felt  that  the  very 
brutal  fact  that  "  the  creation  groaneth  and  travaileth  in 
pain  "  was  not  to  be  blinked  and  not  to  be  reconciled  with 
the  belief  in  an  omnipotent  deity.  As  the  old  antithesis 
put  it,  either  God  doesn't  wish  to  stop  evil  and  pain,  or  He 
can't."  In  either  case  He  is  not  God.  There  is  absolutely 
no  escape  from  that  logic.  Hence  men  preferred  to  believe 
in  the  nonspirituality  of  life  rather  than,  accepting  it,  to 
be  forced  also  to  accept  the  absurd  dogma  of  the  omnipo- 
tent goodness  of  the  father  of  life.  Thus  was  born  the 
modern  doctrine  of  materialism ;  thus  sane,  educated  men, 
closing  their  eyelids  that  they  may  not  see,  pretend  to 
believe  that  "  life  is  a  function  of  matter,"  etc.     Many  now 


LIFE   AND   ITS    PHYSICAL   BASIS.  129 

suppose  it  is  the  tradition  of  Science,  and  that  to  be  a 
"  scientific  "  man  is  to  be  a  materialist.  Many  a  dupe  of 
this  kind  has,  like  Hannibal,  bound  himself  by  an  oath 
before  its  import  could  be  understood,  and  goes  blindly 
forward,  bravely  devoting  fine  powers  of  mind  to  a  hopeless 
and  doomful  task.  To  them  the  Cato  of  a  truer  philosophy 
must  ever  thunder  in  their  ears  the  fateful  fiat  of  a  greater 
Rome,  Delenda  Carthago!  The  whole  position  is  the 
simple  result  of  what  the  logicians  call  a  non  sequitur.  The 
belief  in  the  spirituality  of  life  does  not  at  all  necessitate 
any  belief  in  its  omniscience,  its  omnipotence,  or  even  in 
its  absolute  goodness.  Even  the  most  pious  of  men  have 
been  forced  to  disbelieve  in  the  omniscience — a  palpably 
absurd  dogma.  To  this  may  be  willingly  added  the  admis- 
sion that  boundless  goodness  and  omniscience  do  not 
exactly  saiitent  aux yeux,  when  we  contemplate  the  history 
of  past  men  and  animals.  Had  Life  been  altogether 
beneficent,  poison-bags,  tusks,  bloodshed,  and  the  degrad- 
ing bestiality  of  the  struggle  for  existence,  would  not  have 
been  so  conspicuous  and  characteristic  features  of  past  and 
present  life  as  is  evident.  Even  had  Life  been  omniscient 
without  omnipotence  or  goodness,  it  would  seem  that  her 
ingenuity  might  have  avoided  much  of  these  as  wasteful 
and  useless. 

Thus  the  acknowledgment  of  the  independence  and  im- 
materiality of  life  argues  nothing  as  to  the  goodness  or 
non-goodness  of  that  life.  Neither  the  Christian  nor  any 
religious  faith  gains  a  jot  or  tittle  thereby.  The  question 
of  optimism  or  pessimism  yet  remains.  Rome  may  have 
been  worse  than  Carthage,  but  Rome  was  the  conquering 
fact.  The  final  question  at  issue  between  Schopenhauer 
and  Hegel  is  in  no  wise  touched.  But  the  question  be- 
tween Plato  and  Biichner  is  eternally  settled.  Hegel's 
optimism  may  be  wrong,  but  the  immaterial  loyo^  certainly 
exists,  and  we  are  its  creations  and  mouthpieces.     Scho- 

12 


I30  LIFE   AND    ITS   PHYSICAL   BASIS. 

penhauer's  pessimism  may  be  unjustified,  but  der  Wille  is 
the  heart  and  soul  of  us.  It  might  be  better  if  materialism 
were  true,  but  it  is  not  true.  Science  seeks  to  know  what 
is,  not  what  ought  to  be.  No  profound  mind  would  deny 
the  facts  that  pitying  Buddha  and  pitiless  Schopenhauer 
have  laid  bare.  The  awful  steel  of  Fate  and  suffering  has 
sunk  deeply  into  our  hearts  and  no  divine  Surgeon  comes 
to  extract  it.  The  divinest  Surgeon  that  ever  lived,  in 
uttering  the  saddest  words  ever  spoken,  acknowledged  the 
poisoned  iron  in  his  own  breast.  Eli,  Eli,  lamina  sabachthani. 
Like  this  great  Healer,  and  his  elder  brother  Buddha,  the 
pain  must  not  cloud  our  intellect  and  turn  it  into  a  jug- 
gling instrument  of  revengeful  untruthfulness. 

Following  the  light  of  reason,  we  may  catch  a  gleam  of 
consolation.  Perhaps  there  will  yet  be  a  perfect  divine 
physician.  The  certainty  of  a  common,  universal,  self- 
existent,  and  supernatural  life,  functional  as  the  heart  and 
essence  of  all  organic  beings,  makes  us  secure  in  the  pre- 
servation of  our  true  self.  Individuality  and  personal 
identity — undesirable  accidents  of  our  organization  and 
materiality — we  are  happily  not  doomed  to  inherit,  but  a 
progressive  immortality  of  soul  seems  more  certain  than 
the  fleeting  mortality  of  sense,  that  for  a  day  and  as  a 
child's  toy  has  pleased  and  deluded  us. 


IS   MEDICINE  A  SCIENCE?* 

The  reproach  that  medicine  has  not  kept  step  with  the 
general  scientific  progress  of  the  age,  is  one  so  commonly 
made  that  it  has  doubtless  often  been  accepted  as  a  truism 
by  many  who  in  other  matters  exercise  a  more  discriminat- 
ing judgment.  On  the  part  of  those  who  know  the  facts, 
there  is,  of  course,  not  the  slightest  question  that  medicine 
is  scientific  in  the  best  and  highest  meaning  of  the  word. 
How  the  query  arises  is  easily  explained  when  one  con- 
siders the  erroneousness  of  the  common  conception  of  the 
term  science,  the  failure  to  provide  the  means  of  proper 
physiologic  knowledge  in  our  plans  of  primary  education, 
the  deplorable  condition  of  medical  education,  and,  lastly, 
the  ignorance  of  what  modern  scientific  medicine  has  done 
and  is  doing. 

The  last  point  seems  the  most  important,  and  in  consider- 
ing it  one  must  not  forget  that  so  fast  as  a  more  or  less 
clearly-circumscribed  department  of  medicine  has  grown 
precise  and  scientific,  it  has  as  a  specialty  taken  a  position 
of  semiindependence.  The  world  thinks  only  of  the 
remaining  undifferentiated  part,  called  general  or  internal 
medicine,  as  being  distinctly  medical ;  and  forgets  that  the 
specialties,  which  have  almost  reached  the  limit  of  possible 
scientific  extension  and  accuracy,  are  very  essential  parts 
of  medicine,  themselves  the  samples  and  pledges  of  coming 
progress  in  all.  Thus  in  surgery,  ophthalmology,  obstet- 
rics, dentistry,  otology,  dermatology,  etc.,  there  is  on  the 

*  From  The  Forum  of  Dec,  1889. 
131 


132  IS   MEDICINE   A   SCIENCE? 

part  of  competent  physicians  no  considerable  difference  as 
to  diagnosis  and  treatment  in  a  given  case  ;  and  the  reduc- 
tion of  the  mortality  from  diseases  belonging  to  these  de- 
partments is  proof  of  that  systematization  and  accuracy 
which  we  call  scientific. 

*It  is  well  known  that  the  application  of  bacteriologic 
study  to  surgery,  obstetrics,  etc.,  has  in  important  respects 
revolutionized  them.  Surgical,  hospital,  and  puerperal 
fevers  are  now  almost  things  of  the  past.  Twenty  years 
ago  it  was  not  uncommon  for  the  mortality  of  puerperal 
septicemia  to  mount  as  high  as  30,  and  even  50  per  cent. 
It  is  to-day  less  than  one  per  cent.  The  same  explanation 
is  to  be  given  as  regards  the  successfulness  of  the  modern 
Cesarean  section.  The  science  of  pelvimetry  has  also 
saved  the  lives  of  many  children  and  mothers.  Ophthal- 
mology is  perhaps  the  most  exact  of  the  medical  sciences, 
and  even  if  no  prophylaxis  of  cataract  be  ever  found,  the 
restoration  of  vision  in  95  per  cent,  of  cataract  operations 
is  a  decisive  proof  of  excellent  work.  But  perhaps  a  still 
greater  beneficence  is  to  come  from  stifling  the  most  fertile 
source  of  reflex  neuroses — the  headaches,  dyspepsias, 
choreas,  etc.,  so  often  due  to  "  eye-strain." 

If  one  thoroughly  conversant  with  the  medical  progress 
of  the  last  few  years,  take  up  even  the  best  work  on  path- 
ology or  general  medicine  issued  five  or  ten  years  ago,  he 
is  astonished  to  find  how  much  seems  old  and  outgrown. 
The  stupendous  discoveries  and  advances  made  from  day  to 
day,  cause  the  book  before  the  last  to  seem  like  history 
rather  than  present-day  conclusions.  Any  attempt  even  at 
the  briefest  resume  of  these  wonderful  labors,  even  if  it  did 
not  presuppose  an  encyclopedic  erudition,  would,  in  the 
space  allowed  me,  be  impossible.  To  the  general  reader, 
moreover,  it  would  be  very  dry  reading.  There  are  but  few 
"  choice  souls  "  who  find  a  book-catalogue  interesting  read- 
ing, though  every  line  may  suggest  the  enthusiasms  and 


IS  MEDICINE  A   SCIENCE?  133 

labors  of  years,  and,  in  a  way,  be  fraught  with  profound 
import.  All,  therefore,  that  can  be  done,  is  to  glance  at  a 
few  of  the  most  salient  points  and  aspects  of  modern  scien- 
tific medicine,  which  may  serve  as  illustrations  of  that  spirit 
of  science  and  progress  which  is  working  in  and  through 
it  all. 

No  other  discovery  has  aroused  so  great  hopes,  and  none 
has  so  superbly  satisfied  many  of  them,  as  that  of  the  ex- 
istence and  disease-producing  influence  of  the  minute 
organisms  called  bacteria,  microbes,  or  microorganisms. 
Their  pathogenic  influence  is  now  established  beyond  con- 
troversy, and  to  this  discovery  is  due  the  revolutionizing  of 
surgery,  the  extinction  of  surgical  and  puerperal  fever,  etc. 
Indeed,  every  department  of  medicine  has  been  electrified 
by  the  partial  success  and  perfect  promise  that  it  holds  out. 
I  had  prepared  a  table  of  the  different  orders  of  these 
"  disease-germs  "  that  have  been  studied,  showing  their 
methods  of  "cultivation,"  habitat,  nature,  peculiarities, and 
pathogenic  influences,  but  it  is  too  extended  to  transcribe 
here.  A  glimpse  may  be  gained  of  the  hordes  of  invisible 
enemies  that  may  live  upon  or  within  us,  from  the  mere 
numbers  of  the  principal  species.  From  the  latest  data  that 
I  can  find,  my  summary  shows  76  distinct  species  of  bacil- 
lus, 50  of  micrococcus,  20  of  spirillum,  8  of  sarcina,  6  of 
beggiatoa,  and  one  each  of  leuconostoc,  astococcus,  lepto- 
thrix,  cladothrix,and  crenothrix — 165  in  all.  Of  this  num- 
ber— especially  frightful  if  we  consider  their  tremendous 
power  of  multiplication — some  are  almost  certainly  harm- 
less, while  yet  another  portion  is  doubtfully  pathogenic. 
But  some  43  varieties  of  micrococcus,  30  of  bacillus,  4  of 
spirillum,  and  one  of  leptothrix  are  certainly  connected 
directly  or  indirectly  with  human  diseases.  Among  the 
principal  of  these  are  the  pyogenic  or  pus-forming  bacteria, 
with  which  the  surgeon  has  chiefly  to  do,  numbering  8 
principal  varieties.    Other  orders  of  micrococcus  believed  to 


134  IS  MEDICINE  A  SCIENCE? 

be  associated  with  disease,  are  tiie  micrococcus  of  erysipelas, 
Aleppo  boil,  pneumonia,  mammitis,  diphtheria,  scarlatina, 
smallpox,  measles,  yellow  fever,  gonorrhea,  and  possibly 
of  hydrophobia.  Among  the  pathogenic  bacilli,  the  more 
noteworthy  are  those  of  anthrax,  tuberculosis,  green  diar- 
rhea of  children,  diphtheria,  epidemic  dysentery,  leprosy, 
glanders,  and  typhoid.  The  spirillum  of  cholera  (or 
comma  bacillus)  is  the  most  important  of  the  spirilla.  I 
have  attempted  no  enumeration  of  the  diseases  that  perhaps 
over-enthusiastic  discoverers  believe  due  to  microorgan- 
isms. Even  such  unlikely  types  as  cancer  and  tetanus  are 
confidently  claimed.  There  is,  of  course,  much  indefinite- 
ness,  even  doubt,  as  to  the  etiologic  role  they  play.  The 
study  is  attended  by  extraordinary  difficulties,  and  is 
liable  to  induce  confusion.  Post  hoc  is  doubtless  frequently 
mistaken  iox  propter  hoc,  and  much  extravagance  of  claim 
must  be  set  over  against  the  dead  weight  of  an  extreme 
conservatism. 

The  investigation  of  the  laws  of  these  microbes  gives 
entrancing,  though  also  tantalizing,  glimpses  into  many 
mysteries.  One  such  is  the  theory  of  malarial  or  intermit- 
tent fevers,  to  be  described  later.  The  immunity  given  by 
one  attack  of  an  infectious  disease,  is  explained  as  due  to 
the  appearance,  during  the  first  attack,  of  certain  products 
that  render  the  tissues  and  cells  more  hardy  and  resistant 
to  subsequent  attacks — we  explain  everything  nowadays 
by  habit,  or  organic  memory.  This  fact,  coupled  with  its 
complement,  the  attenuation  of  a  virus,  or  modification  of 
its  virulence,  by  passing  through  the  system  of  another 
animal,  serves  to  make  clear  how,  for  example,  one  attack 
of  smallpox  usually  gives  immunity  from  a  second,  and 
how  the  attenuated  virus,  or  cow  pox,  does  the  same. 
Either  calls  out  the  resistance  of  the  cells  that  have  learned 
skill  in  one  encounter,  and  know  their  enemy  by  experience. 
In  a  certain  sense,  the  invasion  of  the  organism  by  bacteria 


IS   MEDICINE  A   SCIENCE?  135 

is  a  sort  of  intimate  traumatism  or  inner  violence,  whose 
injury  the  inherent  powers  of  the  organism  must  resist  or 
heal.  The  bacterial  origin  of  the  infectious  diseases  reduces 
at  a  stroke  the  catalogue  of  true  idiopathic,  autogenetic,  or 
self-produced  diseases,  and  our  conception  of  the  dignity 
and  heroism  of  the  organism  at  once  rises.  Its  warfare 
against  innumerable  invisible  foes  commands  our  sympa- 
thetic respect.  It  would  seem  that  all  the  body's  foes 
come  from  without.  If  such  a  disease  as  cancer  be  of 
bacterial  origin,  it  is  probable  that  any  other  disease  may 
be,  and  the  dream  of  an  elixir  of  life  would  be  realized  if 
we  could  keep  all  microbes  outside  and  observe  the  laws 
of  hygiene. 

The  infective  diseases  are  the  principal  disease-causers 
and  death-producers  of  the  world,  and  all  are  quite  certainly 
bound  up  with  the  transfer  of  specific  bacteria  or  poisons 
from  one  organism  to  another.  The  profound,  almost  sole, 
lesson  of  prophylaxis  and  preventive  medicine,  is  the 
avoidance  of  contamination.  Phthisis,  the  most  fatal  of  all 
diseases,  causing  one  death  out  of  every  eight,  is  now 
proved  to  be  contagious.  Its  inception  depends  upon  the 
passage  of  the  living  bacillus  from  one  organism  to 
another.  When  this  is  prevented  the  dread  affection  will 
no  longer  mow  down  its  millions.  Its  prevention  seems ' 
easy,  and  by  two  feasible  simple  means  :  the  devitalization 
of  the  sputum  of  consumptive  patients,  as  the  desiccated 
tubercle  bacillus  still  maintains  its  vitality ;  and  the  legal 
control  and  inspection  of  all  dairies  and  of  the  slaughtering 
of  animals,  so  that  tuberculous  meat  or  milk  shall  not  be 
sold.  There  is  now  no  doubt  that  bovine  and  human 
phthisis  is  the  same  disease,  due  to  the  same  microorganism  ; 
and  that  the  transfer  of  the  latter  to  man,  by  the  ingestion 
of  tuberculous  meat  and  milk,  is  a  common  cause  of 
human  phthisis.  Dr.  Behrens  regards  the  exceptional 
freedom  of  the  Jewish  people  from  phthisis,  and  its  low 


136  IS   MEDICINE   A   SCIENCE? 

mortality,  as  due  to  religious  rules  concerning  the  choice 
and  killing  of  cattle  and  the  sale  of  meat. 

Up  to  the  present  time,  it  must  be  confessed  that  bac- 
teriologic  studies  have  not  brought  out  therapeutic  meas- 
ures to  equal  the  etiologic  importance  ascribed  to  the 
microorganism.  To  the  patient  attacked  with  infectious 
disease,  the  thing  of  all  importance  is  not  prevention,  but 
cure.  The  enemy  is  intrenched.  The  great  aim  now  is  to 
find  some  agent  that  will  reach  and  kill  the  bacterium 
without  killing  the  organ  or  tissue  in  which  it  is  secreted. 
Many  indications,  and  indeed  many  successes,  foreshow 
that  we  are  upon  the  eve  of  brilliant  victories,  in  this  re- 
spect, and  the  avid  ingenuity  of  a  thousand  delvers  is  at 
work  upon  the  problem.  What  honor  too  great  for  the 
discoverer  of  such  an  agent?  All  may  end  in  disappoint- 
ment, and  the  world  be  thrown  back  upon  prevention  alone. 
But  if  this  be  effective,  it  is,  of  course,  all  that  is  desired. 
To  annihilate  the  ultimate  causes  that  produce  disease,  or 
to  inhibit  their  action,  is  better  than  numberless  cures  to- 
day, that  must  be  repeated  to-morrow. 

Another  new  field  of  research  that  is  at  present  most 
industriously  worked,  is  that  of  the  substances  called  pto- 
mains  and  leukomains,  the  first  being  chemic,  alkaloidal 
substances,  formed  by  or  during  the  putrefaction  of  nitro- 
genous organic  materials;  the  second,  similar  products 
formed  within  the  living  body  by  tissue-metamorphosis  or 
bacterial  agency.  There  have  been  isolated  and  studied 
some  40  or  more  ptomains  and  unnamed  bases,  of  which 
about  25  have  toxic  or  injurious  effects ;  and  16  leukomains 
and  unnamed  bases.  The  nature  and  actions  of  the  latter 
remain  largely  hidden,  owing  to  the  evident  fact  that  their 
isolation  is  rendered  almost  impossible. 

The  unity  of  all  true  science  is  illustrated  by  the  fact 
that  these  substances,  at  first  seemingly  disconnected  from 
bacteriologic  study  and  relationship,  are  now  seen  to  be 


IS   MEDICINE  A  SCIENCE?  137 

most  intimately  bound  up  with  bacterial  life  and  action.  It 
is  half-proved  that  the  bacterium  does  its  mischief,  or  much 
of  it,  by  the  direct  or  indirect  production  of  these  alkaloidal 
poisons.  The  method,  and  even  the  fact,  is  not  sufficiently 
definite  to  admit  of  a  very  clear  exposition.  The  influence 
of  these  products  upon  the  tissues,  together  with  the  re- 
action— the  habitual  or  acquired  resistance  of  the  tissues 
to  the  same — constitutes  the  immunity  of  which  I  have 
spoken,  acquired  by  the  first  attack  of  a  contagious  disease, 
or  by  the  inoculation  of  attenuated  virus.  A  most  promis- 
ing outlook  is  also  found  in  the  discovery  that  immunity 
is  gained  in  some  diseases,  and  perhaps  in  many,  by  the 
inoculation  of  purely  chemical,  or  artificial  synthetic,  sub- 
stances. The  thought,  like  so  many,  is  brilliant  with  pos- 
sibilities that  make  us  wish  to  see  what  the  next  few  years 
may  bring  forth,  A  beautiful  illustration  of  the  possible 
method  of  action  and  reaction  between  the  bacterium  and 
leukomain,  is  the  theory  of  malarial  and  intermittent  fevers 
— a  theory,  indeed,  that  rests  upon  a  pretty  firm  basis  of 
probability  and  justifiable  inference.  It  is  well  known  that 
bacteria  in  culture  media  often  develop  some  substance 
that  stops  their  growth,  and  that  they  die,  as  it  were,  in 
their  own  poison.  It  is  supposed  that  the  malarial  micro- 
organism does  the  same  in  the  blood,  and  that  the  remis- 
sion, or  intermission,  stage  of  the  disease  corresponds  to 
the  period  when  the  circulating  bacteria  have  been  drowned 
or  paralyzed  by  their  self-produced  poison.  The  stage  of 
the  return  of  the  fever  is  synchronous  with  the  revivifica- 
tion of  the  microbes,  or  with  a  fresh  invasion  of  new  armies 
from"  the  spleen  and  lymphatics. 

Thus,  again  and  again  are  we  brought  back  to  the  con- 
clusion that  in  aim  and  in  fact  medicine  is  becoming  pre- 
ventive. Every  discovery,  even  in  therapeutics,  seems  to 
bear  in  its  hand  the  motto.  Prophylaxis  is  the  best  cure. 
It  is  not  that  great  and  invaluable  discoveries  of  healing 


138  IS   MEDICINE  A   SCIENCE? 

agents  are  not  constantly  being  made.  The  nobler  aim 
and  the  manifest  destiny  of  a  far-sighted  prevention  be- 
come necessarily  dominant  ideals.  The  brilliant  results  of 
vaccination  are  illustration  and  proof.  Of  all  pitiable 
bigots  the  antivaccinationists  are  assuredly  the  finest  speci- 
mens. In  England,  in  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  cen- 
turies, the  smallpox  mortality  was  from  4,000  to  5,000  per 
million  deaths.  In  1887  it  was  nine!  The  decline  in  the 
death-rate  during  the  gradual  extension  of  vaccination, 
whilst  marked  for  all  ages  combined,  has  been  almost  ex- 
clusively among  children.  Since  1847,  in  children  below 
five,  it  has  fallen  80  per  cent.  The  immunity  conferred  is, 
therefore,  in  the  earlier,  and  hence  most  valuable,  period. 
Taking  the  mortality  at  all  ages,  the  death-rate  from  small- 
pox has  fallen  49  per  cent.,  while  that  from  other  causes 
has  fallen  seven  per  cent.  In  the  London  Smallpox  Hos- 
pital, in  the  past  twenty- five  years,  out  of  6,000  cases 
occurring  after  vaccination,  Mr.  Marson  finds  that  the  per- 
centage of  those  stated  to  have  been  vaccinated,  but  having 
no  cicatrix,  was  21^  ;  with  one  vaccine  cicatrix,  7^ ;  with 
two,  4^  ;  with  three,  i^;  with  four  or  more,  ^.  For 
comparison,  the  deaths  of  the  unvaccinated  were  35^  per 
cent.  Of  10,403  cases  of  smallpox  treated  in  the  metro- 
politan hospitals,  the  deaths  of  the  "  vaccinated,  with  good 
marks,"  were  3  per  cent. ;  of  the  "  vaccinated,  with  imper- 
fect marks,"  9  per  cent. ;  of  the  "  vaccinated,  but  with  no 
evidence  of  the  same,"  27  per  cent. ;  of  the  "  unvaccinated," 
43  per  cent.  In  the  face  of  such  facts,  even  cranks  and 
fools  should  learn,  or  be  most  summarily  taught,  the  les- 
son of  silence. 

In  the  same,  though  possibly  in  a  less  striking,  way,  there 
has  been  a  noteworthy  advance  "  all  along  the  line,"  so 
that  there  is  now  no  subject  of  medical  study  that  does  not 
bear  witness  to  the  spirit  of  accurate  and  exhaustive 
research  that  characterizes  our  age.     New  drugs  and  thera- 


IS  MEDICINE  A  SCIENCE?  139 

peutic  agents  are  sought  with  eagerness — and  found  where 
they  would  least  be  expected.  The  very  refuse  of  coal- oil 
refineries  is  wonderfully  enriching  our  materia  medica. 
Every  substance,  whether  organic  or  inorganic,  that  may 
possibly  influence  the  animal  economy  for  good  or  ill,  has 
been  repeatedly  tested  by  manifold  timed  and  guarded 
experiments  upon  animals,  and  finally  upon  the  human 
being,  until  its  powers  are  determined  with  the  precision 
required  in  the  case  of  a  new  explosive,  or  the  torsion 
balance.  Occasionally  there  is  a  sadly  ludicrous  side  to 
this  feverish  eagerness,  and  duped  over-confidence  finds 
itself  landed  in  the  quagmire  of  an  elixir  dream.  But  the 
trained  intelligence  and  massive  strength  of  the  great  body 
of  the  profession  smiles  at  such  sorry  delusions,  and  calmly 
pushes  forward  to  predestined  victory. 

Simply  to  enumerate  the  larger  incidents  of  the  ad- 
vance would  require  a  volume,  not  a  page.  The  finally 
convincing  proof  is  the  work  done.  By  its  fruits  must 
any  work  be  judged.  Let  us,  finally,  glance  at  statis- 
tics. Nothing  is  definitely  known  unless  one  method 
of  the  knowledge  be  numerical.  "The  'sometimes'  of 
the  cautious  is  the  'often'  of  the  sanguine,  the  'always* 
of  the  empiric,  and  the  '  never '  of  the  skeptic ;  but  the 
numbers  i,  10,  100,  10,000,  have  only  one  meaning  for 
all  mankind."  In  1861-70  the  English  death-rate  from  the 
seven  chief  zymotic  diseases — smallpox,  measles,  scarlet 
fever,  diphtheria,  whooping  cough,  fever  (typhus,  ty- 
phoid, continued,  etc.),  and  diarrheal  diseases — was  4.248 
per  1000  living.  In  1887  it  was  2.385 — very  little  more 
than  one  half!  Whether  a  science  or  not,  it  is  plain  that 
medicine  has,  in  this  aspect,  and  in  England  alone,  saved 
over  67,000  lives.  A  remarkable  instance  is  the  class  called 
fevers,  the  number  of  deaths  from  which  in  twenty-five 
years  has  been  reduced  from  about  20,000  a  year  to  5,873. 

Despite  the  general  carelessness  caused  by  the  prevalent 


I40  IS  MEDICINE  A  SCIENCE? 

belief  in  the  noncontagiousness  of  phthisis  and  by  the  use 
of  tuberculous  milk  and  meat,  in  England  from  1850  to 
1880  there  has  been  a  reduction  in  the  number  of  deaths 
from  this  dread  disease  amounting  to  327  per  million.  But 
the  death-rate  for  other  respiratory  diseases  has  remained 
the  same — a  fact  that  is  in  truth  a  cause  for  congratulation, 
when  it  is  remembered  that  the  urbanization  of  all  England 
that  has  gone  on  during  this  period,  together  with  the 
unhealthy  commercial  and  manufacturing  slavery  of  the 
masses,  would  doubtless  have  doubled  the  mortality,  had  not 
Medicine  and  her  handmaid.  Sanitation,  been  everywhere 
heriocally  at  work  to  forefend  and  to  save.  In  the  same 
way  is  to  be  explained  the  increase  in  the  death-rate  for 
diabetes,  chronic  renal  affections,  and  nervous  diseases,  due 
to  the  intensity  of  the  mental  strain  and  worry  of  modern 
commercial  and  fashionable  life.  That  the  death-rate  has 
not  been  trebled,  is  to  the  credit  of  scientific  medicine. 

The  decline  of  the  entire  English  death-rate  summarizes 
the  whole  matter  for  us.  Within  one  hundred  years  that 
of  all  Europe  has  fallen  from  34  per  1000  living  to  about  20, 
and  that  of  England  to  18.5.*  The  death-rate  of  the 
English  army  has  been  reduced  by  more  than  one-half 
within  the  century.  In  the  strict  census-taking  period,  the 
mortality  of  English  males  has  been  reduced  2.88  per  cent., 
and  of  females,  7.62  per  cent.  This  adds  about  one  and 
one-half  years  to  the  average  life  of  males  and  three  to 
that  of  females.  Or,  according  to  Dr.  Ogle,  a  million 
males  will  live  1,439,139  additional  years,  and  a  million 
females,  2,777,584  years.  Each  year,  there  is  thus  placed 
to  the  credit  of  each  average  million  of  the  new-born  a  life 
surplus  of  about  two  million  years.  Has  the  community, 
then,  no  debt  of  gratitude  to  the  medical  profession  ? 

*  The  death-rate  of  Brooklyn  and  New  York,  which  should  be  far  lower 
than  that  of  London,  is  far  higher.  If  it  were  only  equal,  there  would  be  an 
annual  saving  of  16,000  lives,  and  32,000  years  of  sickness. 


IS   MEDICINE  A   SCIENCE? 


141 


If  we  take  the  debit  and  credit  of  each  disease,  we  get 
the  following  table : — 


ANNUAL  DEATHS  PER  MILLION  LIVING  IN  TWO  DECENNIA. 


Cause  of  Dbath. 


Smallpox, 

Measles, 

Scarlet  fever, 

Diphtheria, 

Whooping  cough, 

Fever, 

Diarrheal  diseases 

Cancer, 

Phthisis, 

Hydrocephalus, 

Other  tubercular  diseases 

Diseases  of  the  nervous  system,     . 

"  "      circulatory    system 

and  dropsy,    .    . 

"  "      respiratory   system, 

"  "      digestive  system,   . 

"  "      urinary  system, 

Puerperal  fever,  childbirth,     .    .    . 

Violence, 

All  other  and  unstated  causes,  .    . 


1861-70. 


163 

440 
972 
»85 
527 
885 

1,076 
387 

2,475 
347 
437 

2,78s 

1,349 
3.364 
981 
298 
165 
765 
4,815 


1871-80. 


236 
378 
716 
121 
512 
484 
935 
473 
2,116 

317 

445 

2,770 

1,477 

3,760 

978 

392 

167 

733 
4,262 


Annual 
Increase  or 
Decrease  in 

1871-80. 


+  73 

—  62 
— 256 

-64 

—  15 

— 401 

—141 

+  86 
—359 

—  30 
+     8 

—  15 

-f-128 
+396 

—  3 
+  94 
+     2 

—  32 
—553 


All  causes. 


22,416 


21,272 


Balance  of  decrease, 


1,144 


The  figures  are  not  to  be  had  for  the  past  ten  years,  in 
which  a  marvelous  and  continuous  decline  in  the  death-rate 
is  still  in  progress.  If  we  estimate  that  1,500  lives  per 
million  are  being  saved  the  English  people  by  medical 
science  and  sanitary  legislation,  we  get  a  grand  total  of 
saved  lives  of  over  50,000  a  year,  and  therefore  find  this 
single  people  richer  in  twenty  years  by  more  than  a  mil 
lion  people.  As  nowadays  we  estimate  everything  in  terms 
of  money,  we  may  apply  that  method  to  life  itself;  and 
taking  Dr.  Farr's  low  estimate  of  the  worth  of  an  English 
life,  the  mean  net  value  of  the  phenomenon  called  an  agri- 
cultural laborer  (;^75o),  we  should  by  this  "  buyer's  appraise- 
ment "  have  a  saving  of  something  less  than  a  thousand 


142  IS   MEDICINE   A   SCIENCE? 

millions  of  dollars.  But  what  valuation  could  be  made  of 
the  lives  of  such  men  as  Bessemer  and  Darwin,  supposing 
them  not  among  the  saved  ?  English  statistics  have  been 
made  the  basis  of  illustration,  but  scientific  medicine  has 
penetrated  into  all  civilized  countries — among  six  hundred 
millions  of  people.  Supposing  that  the  saving  of  life  and 
sickness  in  other  countries  has  been  but  one-half  that  in 
England,  we  have  yet  to  multiply  all  our  figures  by  ten. 

But  the  account  is  not  yet  closed.  Dr.  Farr  estimates 
that  for  every  annual  death,  two  persons  are  on  an  aver- 
age suffering  continuously  from  sickness.  At  the  lowest 
rating  there  are  two  years  of  severe  illness  to  every  death. 
If  therefore,  according  to  the  previous  calculation,  1,500 
English  lives  are  saved  each  year,  3,000  years  of  sickness 
are  also  annually  saved.  Even  this  tremendous  saving 
may  be  multiplied  many  times  by  including  the  number- 
less and  unknown,  but  certainly  existing,  cases  where  dis- 
ease is  aborted,  cured,  or  prevented  by  the  skill  that  gives 
back  to  the  healthy  class  persons  who  without  treatment 
might  not  have  died,  but  who  would  have  permanently 
passed  into  the  class  of  those  maimed,  crippled,  or  weak- 
ened by  chronic  or  partially-overcome  disease.  In  such 
regions  as  these,  money  considerations  are  as  much  out  of 
place  as  to  talk  of  buying  a  sunset ;  and  though  it  might 
be  frankly  admitted  that  as  a  business  the  medical  profes- 
sion would  be  pleased  to  take  as  a  compensation  ten  per 
cent,  of  what  it  saves  society,  it  assuredly  infinitely  prefers 
intelligent  cooperation  and  esteem.  That  profession  alone 
at  the  present  time  offers  the  spectacle  of  a  large,  compact, 
self-conscious  body  of  men,  driven  by  no  bigotry  or  zeal- 
otry or  tempestuous  Zeitgeist,  working  with  eagerness, 
determination,  and  almost  the  assurance  of  success,  toward 
its  own  undoing — toward  the  annihilation  of  its  means  of 
subsistence,  and  its  very  existence.  It  may  be  that  disease 
will  never  be  eliminated  from  human  life ;  but  none  are 
prouder  than  medical  men  of  their  partial  success  in  this ; 


IS   MEDICINE  A   SCIENCE?  143 

none  more  elated  over  the  prospect  that  now  seems  almost 
assured,  of  striking  a  final  death-blow  at  the  root  of  all 
contagious  diseases,  or  those  which  cause  the  vast  major- 
ity of  all  death  and  sickness.  In  this  highest  of  all  human 
offices  they  ask  only  sympathetic  help.  They,  too,  are 
certainly  bearing  their  share  of  the  present  burden  of  the 
world's  unfortunate  and  overloaded.  It  is  hardly  an  ex- 
aggeration to  say  that  for  a  full  half  of  its  present  daily 
service,  it  not  only  asks  no  pay,  but  is  glad  and  proud  of 
its  spontaneous  charity.  Every  physician  treats  the  poor 
free  of  charge,  and  in  nearly  every  square  of  all  our  cities 
dispensatories  and  hospitals  are  found  where  the  best  and 
highest  medical  service  is  at  the  disposal  of  all  without 
charge.  Medicine  is  thus  not  only  a  science  but  it  is  an 
art ;  not  only  an  art  but  a  moral  system  and  almost  a  re- 
ligion. Is  there,  has  there  ever  been,  another  such  unself- 
ish work  done  outside  the  religious  faiths  ?  Take  the  law 
for  comparison,  and,  except  in  rare  and  exceptional  cases, 
can  a  poor  factory  girl  or  workman  get  from  analogous 
legal  institutions  talent  for  his  defense,  and,  by  its  aid,  jus- 
tice before  the  law,  without  first  laying  down  a  handsome 
retainer?  Even  with  the  most  just  of  causes,  unless  the 
money  at  stake  be  immense  in  amount,  is  it  not  wiser  to 
allow  injustice  to  rule,  than  to  seek  redress  in  a  modern 
court  of  equity  ?  What  is  the  appreciation  shown  the  science 
of  medicine?  One  instance  only  need  be  given  as  an 
answer.  In  the  so-called  medical  center  of  the  United 
States,  ;^20,ooo,ooo  is  spent  to  construct  a  palace,  rich  with 
marbles  and  carvings,  largely  for  the  use  and  behoof  of 
ward  politicians ;  but  never  a  thousandth  part  of  such 
an  amount  to  endow  an  institution  of  medical  education, 
sanitary  research,  or  preventive  medicine — things  certain 
to  repay,  even  in  dollar-values,  a  thousand-fold,  and  in 
health  progress  and  beneficence,  incalculable  blessings 
throughout  coming  time ! 


THE  DUTY  OF  THE  COMMUNITY  TO 
MEDICAL  SCIENCE.* 

I  cannot  say  that  I  have  had  any  personal  experience  as 
regards  the  difficulty,  but  it  is  stated  that  an  intelligent  and 
duteous  rich  man,  by  reason  of  his  mental  vision  and  con- 
scientiousness, finds  no  problem  so  hard  of  solution  as  that 
of  disposing  of  his  wealth  without  doing  injury  to  the  in- 
dividual legatee  or  to  the  general  community.  There  are 
but  few  "  charities  "  so  carefully  and  judiciously  established 
that  a  cold  intelligence  does  not  find  them  productive  of  as 
much  harm  as  good,  and  there  are  many  that  are  fountains 
of  almost  unadulterated  evil.  The  most  grievous  crimes 
of  many  "good"  men  are  frequently  their  wills — those 
very  documents  in  which  the  devisors  seek  to  make  some 
atonement  for  the  sins  of  wealth-gathering  by  the  uncon- 
scious sin  of  wealth-scattering.  There  should  be  a  book  of 
instruction  written  on  this  subject,  setting  forth  the  science 
of  endowing  without  damning.  Millionaires  are  such  com- 
mon, every-day  folk  that  they  should  be  instructed  and 
trained  in  that  excellent  art,  so  little  taught,  so  little  prac- 
tised— the  art  how  7iot  to  make  an  ass  of  one's  self.  I  have 
read  somewhere  of  a  spinster  of  advanced  years,  bearing 
a  secret  grudge  against  the  government  for  taxing  her, 
triumphantly  considering  that  on  her  death-bed  she  had 
"  got  even  "  with  the  United  States  treasury  by  burning 
her  whole  fortune  of  government  bonds.     Many  bequests 

*  A  paper  read  before  the  American  Academy  of  Medicine  at  its  meeting  in 
Milwaukee,  June  3,  1893.  From  the  Bulletin  of  the  American  Academy  of 
Medicine,  No.  16 

144 


DUTY  TO  MEDICAL  SCIENCE.  I4S 

are  quite  as  wise  and  still  more  harmful.  There  is  a 
strange  fatality,  a  subtle  waywardness  in  institutions, 
whereby  they  insensibly  drift  away  from  the  plan  of 
founders,  and  in  a  few  years  are  seen  to  be  increasing  the 
very  evil  they  were  meant  to  check.  There  is  in  this  an 
historic  sarcasm,  a  divine  irony  that  tells  the  impertinent 
philanthropist  that  it  is  of  no  use  to  give  unless  he  gives 
wisely.  In  charity,  sentiment  alone  is  not  to  be  trusted. 
It  is  only  intellect  that  transforms  benevolence  into  benefi- 
cence. And  this  is  simply  because  benevolence  seeks  only 
alleviation  and  the  annulling  of  effects,  whilst  it  is  only  the 
intellect  that  tells  how  to  stop  causes,  and  thus  end  the  en- 
tire generation  of  effects. 

The  object  of  this  writing  is  to  encourage  medical  men 
by  every  means  in  their  power  to  spread  abroad  through- 
out the  community  the  knowledge  of  a  truth,  awful  in  its 
significance,  and  absolute  in  its  application,  a  truth  of 
which  legislators  and  philanthropists  are  outrageously 
ignorant  or  scornful — the  truth  that  there  is  no  duty  so 
imperative  and  no  self-interest  so  evident  as  the  duty  and 
the  self-interest  of  the  endowment  of  institutions  of  pre- 
ventive and  didactic  medicine.  When  the  power-squander- 
ing legislator  or  the  wealth-squandering  capitalist  falls  ill, 
the  first  thing  he  does  is  to  call  a  physician  to  rescue  him 
from  death.  Power  and  wealth  would  he  gladly  give  for 
health  and  lengthened  life.  But  he  does  not  then  ask 
himself  if  he  or  his  fellows  have  given  a  word  or  a  dollar 
to  enable  that  physician  to  discover  the  causes,  and  thus 
to  prevent  the  existence  of  disease  in  the  abstract.  And 
neither  by  word  nor  deed  has  he  done  anything  to  help 
that  physician  to  outfit  himself  with  the  knowledge  and 
experience  necessary  to  deal  successfully  with  his  own  in- 
dividual ailment.  We  should,  therefore,  by  iteration  and 
reiteration  pound  it  into  the  brains  of  these  silly  folk  that 
such  a  proceeding  is  simply  a  lack  of  foresight,  a  failure  in 
«3 


146  DUTY  TO   MEDICAL  SCIENCE. 

simple  prudence.  In  financial  matters  they  know  enough 
to  create  sinking  funds  and  prepare  for  coming  drafts  and 
liquidations,  but  they  are  ignorant  of  the  most  palpable 
self-interest  in  the  matter  of  the  financial  value  of  life  and 
health,  and  the  dire  expense  of  disease  and  death.  It  is 
the  duty  of  the  Academy  to  teach  financiers  some  financial 
good  sense. 

Dr.  Bayard  Holmes  tells  us  that  the  productive  funds 
of  the  theologic  schools  of  the  country  amount  to  seven- 
teen or  eighteen  millions  of  dollars,  whilst  those  of  the 
medical  schools  amount  to  about  one-half  of  one  million. 
I  have  no  sympathy  with  those  who  would  scorn  the  value 
or  belittle  the  dignity  of  the  science  of  theology.  But  in 
all  candor  what  egregious  injustice  and  imprudence,  finan- 
cial imprudence  of  the  most  literal  sort,  does  not  this  fact 
show  up  ?  Personifying  the  community  as  an  investor  of 
capital  does  he  not  really  exhibit  a  mad-house  economic 
science  ?  Which  yields  the  best  mundane  and  cash  inter- 
est, the  investment  in  M.  D.'s,  or  that  in  D.  D.'s  ?  Jenner 
saves  the  community  more  dollars  in  one  year  than  all 
the  endowments  of  all  the  theologic  schools  of  all  time. 
Behold  the  financial  wisdom  of  the  world  that  makes  an 
investment  thirty-five  times  as  great  in  heavenly  stocks 
that  have  never  declared  a  single  earthly  dividend,  as  the 
stingy  subscription  in  a  company  that  infallibly  divides  an 
enormous  per  cent,  profit  in  hard  cash  every  year !  It  is 
agreed  that  within  a  few  years  medical  science  has  length- 
ened the  average  life  some  three  or  four  years.  This  pro- 
portionately postpones  and  lessens  the  number  of  funerals 
and  funeral  processions,  does  it  not?  Well,  now  how 
much  do  you  suppose  the  community  pays  the  under- 
takers and  the  liverymen  ?  The  saving  in  cab  hire  to  the 
community  from  these  postponed  funerals  would  alone 
richly  endow  every  medical  school  in  the  land !  This  is  a 
reductio  ad  absiirdjim  of  a  peculiar  sort,  but  isn't  it  literally 


Duty  to  medical  science.  147 

true?  We  are  compelled  to  this  kind  of  argument  to 
arouse  the  attention  of  our  remarkable  democratic  investor. 
Gratitude  for  the  saved  life  and  the  postponed  death  we  do 
not  expect — Lord  Demos  has  no  love  for  his  medical 
friends — but  we  do  wish  we  might  have  this  saving  in  cab 
fares  wherewith  to  endow  a  dozen  hygienic  institutes,  a 
score  of  bacteriologic  laboratories,  and  two  score  of  medical 
schools. 

Behold  plainly  the  necessary  results  of  not  endowing 
schools  of  preventive  and  didactic  medicine  : — 

I.  The  putting  of  the  most  precious  thing  in  the  world, 
health  and  life  itself,  in  the  hands  of  men  uneducated  either 
as  regards  general  literature  and  science,  or  as  regards 
medicine.  No  one  of  us — indeed,  not  one  of  the  poor 
fellows  himself  so  dumped  into  the  community — has  any- 
thing but  pity  and  scorn  for  the  medical  outfitting  of  a  man 
who  is  compelled  to  take  charge  of  seriously  ill  patients, 
without  general  preliminary  training,  and  with  only  ten 
or  a  dozen  months  of  medical  theoretic  study.  What  an 
outrageous  mockery  !  After  many  years  of  profound  study 
and  experience  a  schooled  mind  feels  most  poignantly  the 
inadequacy  of  known  science  and  the  bootlessness  of  rich 
experience  to  deal  with  the  unfathomable  mysteries  of 
disease.  It  takes  half  a  lifetime  to  learn  how  not  to  make 
useless  mistakes.  But  to  take  a  boy  so  untrained  that  he 
can't  spell  correctly  any  five  Anglo-Saxon  words,  and  after 
a  few  months'  lecture-taking  and  mnemonic  cramming  to 
place  in  his  hands  the  awful  responsibility  of  the  life  and 
health  of  hundreds  or  thousands — surely  this  is  a  farce 
worthy  only  of  our  civilized  barbarism. 

To  illustrate,  let  me  show  you  a  printed  sheet  containing 
a  student's  notes  on  the  differential  diagnosis  of  four 
varieties  of  tumors.  It  needs  to  be  remembered  that  the 
student  making  the  notes  was  about  to  graduate  in  1893, 
and  that  the  school  in  which  he  studied  makes  much  of  its 


148 


DUTY  TO   MEDICAL  SCIENCE. 


preliminary  entrance  examinations.  The  young  man  was 
an  amateur  printer.  He  set  up  the  type  himself,  corrected 
the  proof,  and  himself  printed  off  a  number  of  copies  for 
the  use  of  his  classmates. 


Encephaloid. 

1  Soft  elastic  not  uniformly  so 

2  Groth  Rapid  Large 

3  Adhesions,  Earley  and  Slight 

4  Pane,  Wandering  until  ulceration 

then  fixed  and  servere 

5  Veins  Large 

6  Foul  ulcer  fungating  edges  ex- 

curvaled     undermined    much 
bleding 

7  Glandular  envolvement  early 
7^  Comes  at  any  age 

8  Seat,   Breast,    Testicles,  Uteris, 

Overies,  Prostate  and  Salivery 
glands. 

9  Duration  9-12  m  fatal. 

10  Nipple  not  retracted. 

11  Histary  Bad. 

Sarcoma. 

1  Firm,  generally    irregular    soft 

and  flucualing  apperently. 

2  Rapid    and   Slow,   Groth  large 


Adhesions  early. 

Pane  slight  until,  ulceration  then 

more 
Veins  moderate. 
Foul  ulcer,  great  bleeding. 
Glandular  envolvement  late. 
72  Any  age. 

8  Seat  connective  tisue  extremities 

of  bones  periosteum,  brest. 

9  Long  duration  before  fatal 

0  Nipple  not  retracted. 

1  History  good. 


SCHIRRUS. 

I 

Hard,  inelastic. 

2 

3 

Groth,  Moderate  and  Small. 
Adhesions,  Late. 

4 
S 
6 

7 

Pane,  Earley  and  sharp  fixed. 

Veins,  Modaily  large 

Edges,  Hard   thickened   abrupt 

little  bleeding. 
Glandular  envolvement.  Late. 

7i 
8 

after  45  X 

Seat,  breast  uterus  stomach  rare 

in    overies    and    testies    and 

Prostat 

9 

Fatal  18-36  mts. 

10 

Retracted  nipple. 

II 

History  good,  excema  of  nipple 
may  precid  it  Pagits  diseas. 

Adenoma. 

I 

Hard  elastic. 

2 

Growth  slow. 

3 

Adhesions  rare. 

4 

Pane  neuralgic  and  menstral. 

5 
6 

Veins  not  enlarge. 
No  Bleading 

7 

7^ 

8 

No  glandular  envolvement. 
Under,  30 
Seat,  brest. 

9 

Not  fatal. 

10 
II 

Nipple  not  retracted. 
History  good 

DUTY  TO   MEDICAL  SCIENCE.  149 

2.  The  lessening  in  the  proportion  of  men  studying  medi- 
cine who  have  had  college  training.  Again  we  are  indebted 
to  Dr.  Holmes  for  his  sad  showing  of  but  some  fifteen  per 
cent,  of  such  students  in  the  United  States.  When  a  pro- 
fession fails  to  attract  the  college-bred  men,  something  is 
certainly  radically  wrong  somewhere.  The  wrong  is 
essentially  the  love  of  the  community  for  quackery  and 
medical  humbug,  but  the  "  somewhere  "  can  only  be  more 
definitely  located  as  due  to  the  general  lowering  of  profes- 
sional character  and  standards  due  to  dumping  thousands 
of  uneducated  boys  into  the  profession. 

3.  And  the  fault  of  the  dumping  process  must  lie  with 
the  commercialization  of  medical  teaching.  Men,  however, 
must  be  taught  in  some  manner  and  to  some  degree  ;  and, 
with  unendowed  schools,  the  motive  of  teaching  must  be 
as  it  too  long  has  been,  and  too  much  still  is,  the  earning 
of  money,  or  more  commonly  the  making  of  consultation 
practice  by  the  fact  of  professional  honor  and  position. 
Hence  the  inevitable  result,  the  necessity  of  graduating  as 
many  students  as  possible,  regardless  of  fitness  or  acquire- 
ment. It  thus  comes  about  that  proprietary  or  commer- 
cial medical  colleges  do  not  generally  willingly  advance 
the  standards,  either  of  entrance  or  of  graduation,  and  they 
lengthen  the  period  of  study  only  as  they  are  forced  to  do 
it  by  the  example  of  university  rivals  or  in  shamed  defer- 
ence to  public  opinion.  The  rule  does  not  hold  in  Buffalo, 
doubtless  in  other  places  also,  and  in  Philadelphia  we  have 
one  splendid  exception  to  this  sad  law.  Led  by  the 
glorious  example  of  the  University  of  Pennsylvania  and 
fired  with  the  pride  of  sex,  supplemented  also  by  a  genuine 
love  of  progress,  our  noble  Woman's  Medical  College  has 
adopted  the  four  years'  graded  course  in  advance  of  two 
large  medical  schools  for  men. 

Excellent  instances  are  pointed  out,  that  show  proprie- 
tary medical  schools  advancing  the  standard,  and  at  least 


ISO  DUTY  TO  MEDICAL  SCIENCE. 

soon  following  the  example  of  endowed  schools  in  length- 
ening the  course  and  broadening  it  to  meet  the  demands 
of  the  entirely  new  scientific  school  of  medicine  so  suddenly 
and  so  lately  come  upon  us.  Such  exceptions  both  prove 
the  law  and  test  the  rule.  They  are  what  they  are  despite 
the  natural  tendency,  and  because  of  the  dignity  of  charac- 
ter of  the  governing  and  teaching  body.  If  half  a  dozen 
men  own  a  college,  absorb  all  its  revenues  and  honors, 
it  is  asking  too  much  of  unconverted  human  nature 
to  expect  them  to  tremendously  enlarge  the  paid  teach- 
ing body,  dividing  both  the  emoluments  and  fame,  by 
reorganizing  the  school  to  meet  the  entirely  changed 
demands  of  to-day.  It  may  sometimes  happen,  but,  alas ! 
it  may  often  not  happen.  It  is  nothing  but  opera-bouffe 
medical  education  to  pretend  to  fit  modern  physicians  for 
their  work  by  a  half  dozen  or  so  men  talking  a  few  hours 
a  week  at  a  half  thousand  boys  for  two  or  three  half  years. 
Sometimes  the  half  dozen  may  be  united  in  harmonious 
ambition,  and  with  dignity  "  tide  over "  the  passage  to  a 
better  future.  But  sometimes,  too,  the  plan  may  result  in 
making  a  school  a  hotbed  of  politics,  of  injustice  to 
alumni,  and  of  mutual  jealousies. 

Possibly  the  dying  economist  thinks  he  is  doing  his 
duty  to  the  health  of  the  community  and  to  medicine  by 
the  endowment  of  hospitals.  It  is,  indeed,  becoming 
fashionable  to  endow  free  beds,  to  dance  and  conduct 
lotteries,  as  the  newspapers  say, "  for  sweet  charity's  sake." 
Some  good,  much  good  has  certainly  been  effected  in  this 
way,  but  it  is  time  to  modify,  limit,  and  direct  the  thought- 
less trend  of  sentiment  before  historic  momentum  increases 
so  much  that  hospitalism  will  become  a  sad  disease  and 
hospital  endowments  will  rival  the  wasted  wealth  of  the 
present  day  English  guilds.  As  at  present  managed  it  is 
useless  to  deny  the  enormity  of  the  hospital  and  dispensary 
abuses  already  existing,  impossible  to  ignore  the  dangerous 


DUTY  TO   MEDICAL  SCIENCE.  I51 

increase  thereby  of  popular  communistic  habit,  to  forget 
the  improvidence  thus  encouraged,  and  lastly  the  frightful 
injustice  to  physicians  as  a  class.  If  these  things  can  not 
be  righted,  the  giving  of  money  to  hospitals  without  care- 
ful and  sharp  restrictions  as  to  uses  and  abuses,  the  weed- 
ing out  those  able  to  pay,  etc.,  etc.,  may  become  and  has 
even  now  often  become  a  public  injury  rather  than  a 
public  benefit. 

Let  me  illustrate  how  hospital  endowments  may  be 
utterly  turned  from  the  purpose  of  founders  and  become 
at  once  engines  of  professional  and  social  wrong.  The 
Coventry  Provident  Dispensary,  of  England,  came  into 
existence  in  1831.  It  now  has  a  membership  of  some 
26,000  in  a  population  of  some  50,000.  The  medical  staff 
numbers  twenty-six.  Of  course  in  founding  it,  and  one  of 
the  founders  still  lives  to  bear  witness,  the  intention  was 
to  provide  medical  services  for  working  people  and  those 
who  could  not  pay  medical  men.  But  now  behold  !  On 
the  ground  that  some  of  the  medical  staff  receive  small 
salaries  from  the  endowment  funds,  the  government  of  the 
hospital  by  a  large  majority  lately  passed  a  resolution  to 
the  effect  that  the  well-to-do  and  rich  should  be  allowed 
membership  and  so  entitled  to  charity  treatment  as  well  as 
the  poor. 

Much  of  this  sort  of  socio-economic  depravity  would  of 
course  soon  ruin  medical  education  and  professional  dignity. 
It  is  high  time  that  we  as  a  body  of  men  haul  up  sharp 
and  refuse  to  further  aid  in  our  own  personal  and  profes- 
sional self-degradation.  This  is  a  sort  of  suicide  that  can 
arouse  only  pity  and  contempt.  If  we  are  willing  to  become 
valets  we  are  worthy  to  become  valets.  But  even  if  we 
are  willing,  society  should  not  be  willing,  because  every 
gain  of  professional  honor  is  so  much  gain  for  society, 
and  every  loss  of  professional  self-respect  is  society's 
loss.      Society,    the    ordinary    citizen,    should    be    more 


IS2  DUTY  TO  MEDICAL  SCIENCE. 

jealous  of  medical  honor  and  progress   than   physicians 
themselves. 

But  even  if  we  left  this  aspect  of  the  matter  entirely  by 
side,  what  is  hospitalism  at  last  but  pecking  away  at  results 
without  a  finger  raised  to  shut  off  the  everlasting  produc- 
tion of  these  results  ?  There  is  no  need  to  remind  phy- 
sicians of  their  divine  duty  to  heal  disease,  but  there  are 
two  other  duties  far  more  divine  :  The  duty,  first,  of  training 
and  fitting  the  physician  so  that  he  shall  be  capable  of 
healing  disease ;  and,  second,  the  still  grander  duty  of 
preventing  disease.  To  train  men  in  the  knowledge  and 
cure  of  disease  requires  an  endowed  college.  The  unen- 
dowed institution  is  doomed  and  must  be  supplanted  by 
the  institution  that  by  reason  of  endowment  is  freed  from 
the  mercenary  dictates  of  its  patrons  and  of  its  proprietors, 
and  that  can  provide  the  laboratory  and  clinical  instruction 
needed  to  enable  the  physician  to  meet  the  arduous  and 
exacting  demands  of  modern  science  and  modern  society. 

But  the  great  problems  of  medicine  are  now  summed  up 
in  the  word  prevention,  and  the  greatest  benefactor  of  the 
world  is  he  who  directly  or  indirectly  neutralizes  or  kills 
the  germs  or  origins  of  disease.  There  is  nothing  more 
hopeful  for  the  future  of  medicine  than  the  fact  that  phy- 
sicians are  eagerly  turning  their  interest  and  labor  to  the 
work  of  hygiene  and  prophylaxis.  There  was  much  danger, 
and  there  is  still  some  danger,  that  the  nonmedical  scientist 
— I  mean  the  bacteriologist,  the  hygienist,  and  the  scientific 
man  abstractly  considered — should  seize  upon  preventive 
medicine  and  leave  the  physician  the  more  restricted  and 
subordinate  domain  of  therapeutics.  If  this  danger  is  not 
obviated  through  the  retention  of  the  grander  domain  by 
medical  men  proper,  if  they  do  not  hold  and  lead  in  the 
work  of  prevention,  then  medicine  would  in  a  few  years 
not  occupy  the  proud  and  honorable  position  into  which 
she  is  now  gloriously  entering.    It  is  professionally  a  great 


DUTY   TO   MEDICAL   SCIENCE.  153 

good  fortune  that  Jenner  and  Koch  were  practising  physi- 
cians. May  it  be  that  the  coming  discoveries  in  prevention 
shall  also  be  made  by  physicians,  and  that  we  shall  all  do 
our  work  in  the  sanitary  and  prophylactic  sciences  upon 
which  the  welfare  of  society  depends.  Ours  is  the  only 
profession  that  is  literally  and  enthusiastically  devoted  to 
professional  suicide. 

And  we  must  teach  and  beg  society  to  help  us  to  commit 
this  divine  sort  of  suicide.  We  must  plead  with  our 
masters  against  their  own  blindness  and  indifference  to  us 
and  to  their  own  welfare.  We  must  beg  them  to  found 
and  endow  institutions  where,  while  it  is  needed,  men  may 
best  learn  the  therapeutic  wisdom  of  the  past,  and  also 
where  they  may  discover  the  means  to  make  therapeutics 
itself  unnecessary.  Pathogeny  will  soon  kill  pathology  if 
we  give  it  a  chance,  because  pathogenic  knowledge  will 
stop  pathologic  function. 

We  should  therefore  seek  to  switch  some  of  the  money 
now  fashionably  and  mechanically  going  to  hospital  endow- 
ments towards  institutions  devoted  more  directly  to  the 
better  education  of  physicians  in  the  therapeutics  and  the 
prevention  of  disease.  Here  is  an  almost  unpreempted 
field  and  one  that  infallibly  offers  speedy  and  certain  re- 
turns. 

Like  morning  light  surging  upward  from  below  the 
horizon's  edge,  we  all  see  and  know  that  the  sun  of  scien- 
tific medical  discovery  is  soon  to  rise  upon  our  long  dark- 
ened world.  We  all  recognize  that  we  are  soon  to  discover 
the  causes  and  the  prevention  of  much  of  the  pathologic 
evil  that  has  filled  the  world  with  suffering  and  gloom  up 
till  now.  If  we  could  but  have  the  means,  if  concentrated 
effort  could  be  brought  about,  if  the  awful  opportunity 
could  be  grasped ! 

There  are  two  sources  whence  may  come  the  endow- 
ments of  institutions  of  didactic  and  preventive  medicine : 


154  DUTY   TO   MEDICAL  SCIENCE. 

From  communal,  i.  e.,  governmental  gift,  or  |from  private 
bequest. 

Shall  we  also  feed  at  the  public  crib,  or  seek  to  do  it  ? 
There  is  not  the  least  discussion  as  to  the  abstract  duty  and 
self-interest  of  the  state  to  do  this  work.  It  is  preemi- 
nently a  state  duty  and  necessity.  The  resultant  good  is 
the  good  of  all,  and  more  particularly  is  it  the  good  of  the 
coming  race.  The  appeal  is  to  the  whole  and  to  the  future 
rather  than  to  the  individual  and  the  present.  Why  then 
should  not  the  state  be  educated  and  compelled  to  execute 
its  most  manifest  duty?  Simply  because  the  object  we 
seek  to  realize  is  an  ideal  beyond  the  mental  grasp  and  the 
moral  strength  of  Lord  Demos,  In  his  heart  of  hearts 
Demos  loves  magic  and  quackery,  and  in  a  representative 
form  of  government  the  representor  cannot  rise  far  above 
the  moral  and  intellectual  level  of  the  represented.  We 
must  do  good  to  men,  we  must  give  them  good  gifts,  even 
though  they  at  first  scorn  both  the  gifts  and  the  givers. 
This  is  the  attitude  of  mind  of  all  great  men.  True  grati- 
tude may  be  ours  only  after  our  ears  are  deaf  and  dead  to 
the  word  of  belated  thanks. 

But  there  are  other  reasons  why  we  should  not  rely  upon 
the  government.  If  the  unselfish  and  worthy  may  be  thus 
aided,  the  selfish  and  the  unworthy  will  bedevil  the  legisla- 
tor out  of  his  wits  until  he  consents  to  their  clamor.  With 
state  legislatures  voting  the  people's  money  for  hypnotism, 
homeopathy  and  humbug  and  the  like,  and  protecting  the 
infamies  of  the  patent  nostrum  vendor,  what  may  be  ex- 
pected of  Demos  and  his  representatives?  In  Pennsyl- 
vania and  elsewhere  things  have  already  reached  the  pass 
of  taking  every  petition  from  every  institution  that  by  the 
most  ludicrous  twists  of  logic  do  dub  themselves  charitable, 
and  after  footing  up  all  the  figures,  vote  a  small  lump  sum 
to  be  divided  pro  rata  among  all.  Each  thus  gets  at  least 
an  ear  or  a  nubbin,  and  the  representative  can  smile  at  his 


DUTY   TO   MEDICAL   SCIENCE.  155 

constituents  until  the  next  election !  It  thus  becomes 
doubtful  if  the  success  of  the  best  institution  in  securing  a 
governmental  grant,  even  for  the  best  medical  purposes, 
will  not  in  the  long  run  prove  a  cause  for  regret  rather 
than  for  congratulation.  It  forms  a  precedent  that  will 
enable  proprietary  and  private  greed  to  secure  the  same 
benefits,  and  thus  the  evil  will  grow  as  fast,  perhaps  even 
faster,  than  the  good.  The  watering  tongue  and  the  long 
carnivorous  teeth  of  "  me  too  "  will  be  well  hidden  beneath 
the  cloak  of  charity.  And  if  all  that  the  community 
thinks  medical  were  really  so !  If  we  were  a  united  pro- 
fession !  But  the  sectarians  make  it  impossible  to  speak 
to  the  community  with  one  voice. 

I  think  our  reliance  must  be  upon  private  bequests,  and 
these  can  be  secured  only  as  we  educate  and  interest  the 
rich.  We  must  never  weary  in  showing  the  neglect  of  the 
greatest,  most  palpable,  most  certain  means  of  doing  good. 
There  is  a  strange  fatality  in  men,  an  unaccountable  in- 
ability of  seeing  the  need  that  lies  nearest,  the  good  that  is 
dearest.  There  is  more  money  to-day  devoted  to  astron- 
omy than  to  the  prevention  of  disease.  It  is  positively 
wonderful  to  think  that  men  should  be  more  interested  in 
stars  and  constellations  than  in  their  bodies  and  their 
physiologic  life. 

As  educated  men  there  can  be  no  question  of  our  pref- 
erence for  the  institutions  of  didactic  medicine  that  encour- 
age the  better  preliminary  education.  We  have  shivered 
to  learn  that  the  proportion  of  college-bred  men  entering 
upon  medical  careers  is  so  ignominiously  small,  and  that  it 
is  decreasing.  To  medical  schools  connected  with  univer- 
sities we  should  therefore  seek  to  divert  the  streams  of  en- 
dowment. Assuredly  the  most  ludicrous  of  beggars  is  the 
proprietary  school  seeking  endowment  without  limitation 
of  the  professorial  salary  of  the  professorial  proprietor.  If 
private  persons  wish  to  make  presents  to  their  private  pro- 


IS6  DUTY  TO   MEDICAL  SCIENCE. 

fessorial  friends,  it  is  a  good  thing — for  the  friends — but 
the  donors  may  hardly  lay  claim  to  much  intelligent  per- 
spicuity or  to  a  large  humanitarian  love. 

And  so  far  as  relates  to  the  education  of  practical  physi- 
cians a  most  pathetic  negligence  is  that  of  medical  scholar- 
ships. There  may  be  such,  but  I  do  not  know  of  one  in  the 
United  States.  The  first  noble  attempt  or  example  in  this 
direction  is  that  of  the  College  of  Physicians  and  Surgeons  in 
Chicago,  which  has  offered  free  tuition  to  ten  students  each 
year  for  the  purpose  of  encouraging  a  higher  standard  of 
preliminary  and  medical  education.  All  honor  to  the  men 
and  institution  that  set  the  example.  Thousands  of  scholar- 
ships exist  to  help  struggling  ambition  in  the  fields  of  gen- 
eral collegiate  training,  in  theologic,  technologic,  and  in 
general  scientific  education ;  but  with  some  experience  and 
observation  I  have  never  elsewhere  witnessed  purer  ideals 
more  heroically  pursued  through  years  of  penury  and  suf- 
fering than  by  many  medical  students.  Everybody  seems 
to  think  it  of  no  question,  even  a  matter  for  mirth,  that  a 
medical  student  shall  endure  unspeakable  bitterness  and 
loneliness  in  seeking  to  prepare  himself  for  a  work  of  the 
most  primal  importance  and  value  to  the  community.  If 
good  citizens  wish  to  help  noble  young  men,  if  they  wish 
to  forefend  and  brighten  many  tragedies  silently  and  man- 
fully borne,  let  them  look  among  medical  students.  Thous- 
ands would  gladly  give  more  years  than  the  schools  demand 
to  their  studies  and  preparation  if  by  rigorous  and  unan- 
swerable necessity  they  were  not  driven  out  to  speedy 
bread-winning  with  its  resultant  experimentation  on  the 
lives  of  their  fellow-men. 

Let  us,  then,  go  back  to  our  lay  friends  with  a  message, 
a  new  gospel  we  must  be  absolutely  unwearied  in  preach- 
ing— the  message  of  a  new,  hitherto-neglected  duty  to  a 
new,  hitherto -neglected  science  of  medicine.  Let  us  prove 
to  them  a  hundred  times  over  that  the  best  good  abstractly 


DUTY   TO   MEDICAL   SCIENCE.  157 

is  freedom  from  disease,  a  healthy  life,  a  reduction  of  a 
needlessly  high  death-rate.  Viewed  from  a  low  stand- 
point alone,  there  is  no  investment  in  money  so  certain  of 
interest,  and  of  so  high  a  rate  of  interest,  as  the  investment 
in  saved  human  lives.  Let  us  urge  again  and  again  the 
services  of  medical  men  to  the  community.  Where  would 
have  been  our  navies  and  their  victories  with  scurvy  still  a 
scourge  ?  What  a  saving  in  money  to  the  English  gov- 
ernment is  that  shown  by  the  reduction  in  the  Indian  army 
death-rate  from  ninety  in  the  thousand  to  thirteen  in  the 
thousand.  Pasteur's  bacteriologic  studies  are  estimated 
to  have  saved  France  as  much  money  as  the  entire  German 
indemnity  payment.  Can  the  financial  value  of  the  work 
of  Lister  be  estimated,  so  enormous  is  it  ?  In  the  German 
army  by  compulsory  vaccination,  smallpox  is  nonexistent, 
and  all  over  the  world,  despite  the  antivaccination  cranks, 
vaccination  has  saved  the  nations  more  money  than  their 
present  national  wealth.  We  are  almost  certain  that  by  a 
similar  procedure  the  dread  scourge  of  cholera  may  be 
likewise  stopped.  Lastly,  there  are  your  insurance  statis- 
tics and  premiums  showing  beyond  all  negation  or  quibble 
the  lessened  death-rate.  Compute  by  average  wage  and 
average  length  of  life  the  money  value  of  a  human  life; 
then  multiply  and  again  multiply  the  three  or  four  years 
of  lengthened  life  due  to  medicine  of  every  one  in  the 
nation,  and  in  all  civilized  nations,  and  compare  this  amount 
with  the  total  values  of  all  wealth !  Then  it  may  become 
manifest  what  medicine  has  already  done,  but  before  and 
beyond  all  what  she  still  promises  to  do  if  she  have  but  a 
tithe  of  the  sympathy  and  help  she  deserves. 


CHARITY-ORGANIZATION   AND  MEDICINE.* 

No  subject  is  more  rich  in  suggestion  and  in  acute  de- 
mand than  that  of  the  relations  of  medicine  to  those  depen- 
dent upon  the  community  by  reason  of  crime,  of  disease 
of  body  or  mind,  or  of  defect,  congenital  or  acquired. 
Of  these  classes  not  one  is  devoid  of  medical  relations,  for 
as  counsellor,  as  curer,  or  as  preventer,  the  physician's 
voice  should  be  heard.  If  we  do  not  strike  hands  with 
Lombroso  and  say  that  all  crime  is  due  to  abnormality  of 
organism,  certainly  crime  and  disease  have  some  most  inti- 
mate relations.  What  are  they  ?  What  likewise  are  the 
subtle  bonds  that  link  together  disease,  physiologic  or 
neurologic,  with  mental  abnormalism  ?  We  do  not  seek  to 
escape  from  our  responsibility  for  much  of  the  world's 
blindness ;  the  idiot  is  physiologically  defective ;  otology 
and  laryngology  have  not  said  their  last  words  as  to  deaf- 
mutism  ;  every  United  States  pensioner  holds  a  physician's 
certificate  (more's  the  pity !) ;  have  the  surgeons  done  all 
that  is  possible  for  the  cripples  ?  Have  we  no  accounta- 
bility for  pauperism,  no  responsibility  for  the  criminally 
high  death-rates,  and  no  guilt  for  the  criminally  low  aver- 
age length  of  life  ?  In  the  mysterious  tapestry  of  civiliza- 
tion disease  is  weaving  a  thousand  miscolored  and  rotten 
fibers  that  mar  its  beauty,  spoil  its  design,  and  weaken  its 
strength.     Shall  we  longer  permit  with  careless  consent 

*  Abridged  Presidential  Address  delivered  before  the  American  Academy 
of  Medicine,  at  its  meeting  in  Jefferson,  N.  H.,  August  29,  30,  1894.  From 
the  Bulletin  of  the  Academy  of  i8g4  and  from  The  Medical  News,  Ociohtx  13, 
1894. 

158 


CHARITY-ORGANIZATION  AND   MEDICINE.  159 

such  negligent  and  fateful  weaving  ?  Nay,  shall  we  longer 
consent  to  be  ourselves  such  weavers  ? 

And  when  one  faces  these  problems,  how  they  grow ! 
At  first  it  seems  as  if  the  interrelations  of  the  profession, 
the  dependent  classes,  and  the  lay  community  are  few  and 
comparatively  unimportant,  but  with  sharp  observation  we 
see  long  and  strong  bands  of  cause  and  effect  subtly  run- 
ning out  and  in,  like  warp  and  woof,  linking  and  locking 
one  with  another  and  each  with  all. 

One  of  the  strangest  and  most  dazing  truths  that  soon 
becomes  manifest  is  that  charity  as  commonly  practised  is 
sin.  The  word,  like  many  another,  bears  witness  to  the 
sad  history  of  mankind.  The  beautiful  Greek  word  is 
almost  untranslatable  into  English.  Its  gracious  compas- 
sion or  tender  pity  has  become  simply  almsgiving — a  thing 
usually  a  double  curse,  degrading  both  to  the  giver  and  to 
the  receiver.  To  relieve  suffering  is  the  delight  and  the 
duty  of  all  good  hearts  ;  but  we  must  see  to  it,  i.  That  the 
suffering  is  real  and  not  fictitious ;  2.  That,  if  real,  it  is  not 
deserved;  3.  And  most  important,  that  by  our  methods  we 
do  really  relieve  and  do  not  increase  the  suffering.  It  is 
just  here  that  we  run  across  the  first  principle  of  the 
charity-organization  societies,  which  is  to  make  benevo- 
lence scientific.  It  only  needs  a  few  bitter  experiences  (and 
we  have  all  had  many  such,  I  suppose)  in  relieving  sup- 
posed suffering  without  investigation,  in  giving  doles  to 
street  beggars,  or  in  cashing  checks  for  unfortunate  ac- 
quaintances, to  give  us  most  convincing  proofs  that  under 
existing  circumstances  and  as  human  beings  are  at  present 
constructed,  noninvestigating  relief  increases  the  evil  it 
thinks  to  lessen. 

Last  year  at  the  Philadelphia  Hospital  I  was  puzzled  at 
my  vain  attempts  to  cure  what  seemed  a  case  of  simple 
conjunctivitis.  After  weeks  of  varied  therapeutic  measures 
I  suspected  and  demonstrated  that  the  "  tramp  "  anointed 


t6o  CHARITY-ORGANIZATION   AND   MEDICINE. 

his  eyes  just  prior  to  each  of  my  visits  with  a  strong  solu- 
tion of  soap.  In  this  way  he  avoided  being  turned  out 
upon  a  cold  world  until  springtime  came.  Another  fellow, 
so  long  as  he  remained  under  treatment,  was  in  receipt  of 
^5.00  a  week  from  the  Cigarmakers'  Union,  and  he  could 
at  pleasure  induce  a  subacute  attack  of  iritis,  filling  the 
anterior  chamber  of  the  eye  with  blood  by  a  very  energetic 
bit  of  ocular  massage.  The  older  surgeons  at  the  Phila- 
delphia Hospital  were  often  puzzled  by  the  unusual  diffi- 
culty of  healing  chronic  leg-ulcers,  until  it  was  found  that 
the  owners  did  not  desire  to  have  them  healed,  and  pre- 
vented healing  by  tightly  binding  in  the  ulcers  old-fashioned 
cents. 

It  has  for  years  been  my  practice  to  give  every  street 
beggar  a  charity-organization  card,  with  promise  of  relief 
if  he  should  be  found  worthy  by  the  agent  of  the  society. 
Only  one  has  ever  returned,  and  he  was  set  right  without 
any  almsgiving.  In  China  the  making  of  monstrosities 
was  a  regular  business  by  putting  children  in  pickling  vats 
for  years,  by  breaking  and  mending  their  bones,  or  by 
transplanting  upon  their  bodies  bits  of  the  skin  of  animals. 
We  are  horrified  at  this,  but  are  we  not  equally  infamous 
with  our  dime-museum  glass-eaters,  our  foundling-asylums, 
and  our  patent-medicine  beastliness  ? 

Mendicity  is  mendacity.  The  crimes  of  tramps  and 
street-beggars  are  only  surpassed  by  the  crimes  of  those 
who  give  to  them.  Mendicancy  in  all  its  forms  and  masks  is 
not  the  result  of  poverty,  but  is  the  cause  of  poverty.  All 
indiscriminate  almsgiving,  all  wholesale  crowd-relief,  or 
collective-relief  of  want  or  suffering,  is  either  a  forged,  to- 
be-protested  promise-to-pay  note  of  sympathy,  or  it  is  the 
payment  of  wages  for  something  done.  Nine  times  out  of 
ten  it  is  selfish  charity,  or  self-flattery.  Foolish  people 
love  to  flatter  themselves  that  they  are  kind-hearted. 
Benevolence  is  fashionable,  and  fashionable  people — are 
fashionable  I 


CHARITY-ORGANIZATION  AND  MEDICINE.  i6i 

One  of  the  most  debauching  and  disgusting  forms  of 
selfishness  is  that  of  indiscriminate  philanthropy.  For 
downright  diabolism  witness  the  mutual  hatreds  of  two 
rival  professional  philanthropists !  Almsgiving,  on  the 
other  hand,  is  wages  :  by  giving  to  beggars  and  tramps  we 
pay  for  the  continuance  and  increase  of  beggary  and 
trampism  ;  by  Sunday  breakfasts  we  increase  hunger  on 
Sunday  mornings,  and  we  also  secure  listeners  for  our 
pseudoreligious  after-performances  ;  by  indiscriminate  out- 
patient relief  we  stimulate  the  production  of  disease,  hire 
patients  to  experiment  on,  increase  our  own  reputation  or 
that  of  our  hospital,  and  at  one  fine  stroke  pauperize  both 
the  profession  and  the  populace;  by  municipal  workshops, 
State  aid  to  the  unemployed  and  socialistic  demagogism 
we  hire  people  to  be  unemployed,  to  strike,  and  to  lessen 
the  sum-total  of  production  ;  by  institutionalism  gone  mad, 
we  hire  the  people  to  get  rid  of  their  personal  duties  to 
their  dependents,  and  hire  those  on  the  borderland  of 
breakdown,  physical  or  mental,  to  give  up  the  last  instinct 
of  self-help.  We  pay  for  these  things  and  many  like  them 
when  we  give  alms  and  taxes  and  hire  other  people  to  be 
sympathetic  for  us.  Of  course,  what  we  shirk  doing  our- 
selves, our  hired  agents  will  hardly  do  better.  "  Like 
master,  like  man." 

Appalled  by  this  condition  we,  perhaps,  stumble  upon 
the  work  of  the  charity-organization  societies,  and  at  once 
we  have  a  clear  statement,  both  of  the  etiology  and  the 
treatment  of  the  disease.  Of  all  things  these  societies  beg 
that  no  living  spark  of  compassion  or  good-will  shall  be 
quenched,  and  no  hand  reached  out  to  help  shall  be  per- 
manently withdrawn.  There  is  a  profound  danger  that, 
chilled  by  ingratitude  and  fraud,  the  foolishly  kind  shall 
become  the  foolishly  cruel.  If  so,  it  only  proves  that  their 
former  charity  was  as  selfish  as  their  present  uncharity. 
They  gave  before  to  please  themselves,  and  refuse  help 


i62  CHARITY-ORGANIZATION   AND   MEDICINE. 

now  for  the  same  reason.  Charity-organization,  as  I  have 
said,  aims  at  making  kindness  effective,  benevolence  scien- 
tific. The  heart  must  inspire,  the  intellect  carry  out.  The 
brain  is  an  inhibitory  organ,  whether  we  view  it  physiologi- 
cally, scientifically,  or  sociologically.  But  inhibition  is 
regulative,  not  destructive.  In  the  amelioration  of  the 
afflictions  of  mankind,  it  is  only  the  intellect  that  can  guide 
to  lasting  results,  but,  like  the  governor  of  the  engine,  it 
cannot  supply  the  living  steam,  and  it  would  certainly  not 
advise  "  no  steam." 

As  stated  on  the  title-page  of  the  excellent  little  Hand- 
book for  Friendly  Visitors  Among  the  Poor,  compiled  and 
arranged  by  the  Charity-Organization  Society  of  the  City 
of  New  York  (published  by  G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons),  charity 
must  do  five  things  : — 

1.  Act  only  upon  knowledge  got  by  thorough  investi- 
gation. 

2.  Relieve  worthy  need  promptly,  fittingly,  and  tenderly. 

3.  Prevent  giving  unwise  alms  to  the  unworthy. 

4.  Raise  into  independence  every  needy  person  when 
this  is  possible. 

5.  Make  sure  that  no  children  grow  up  paupers. 
Or,  we  might  say: 

1.  Don't  help  frauds. 

2.  Help  so  as  to  make  future  help  unnecessary. 

3.  Don't  hire  people  to  be  miserable. 

4.  Prevent  dependency. 

All  of  this,  once  more,  seems  to  have  little  medical  bear- 
ing ;  but  it  is  only  seemingly  so.  The  booklet  contains  an 
important  and  excellent  chapter  on  sanitary  suggestions  by 
Dr.  Charles  D.  Scudder.  It  should  be  remembered  that  it 
is  only  an  A  B  C  book,  so  to  speak,  designed  only  to  guide 
beginners,  to  interest,  and  to  lead  on  to  the  deeper  purposes 
of  the  organization.  I  hope  every  member  of  the  Academy 
will  get  and  read  the  book  issued  by  the  Johns  Hopkins 


CHARITY-ORGANIZATION  AND  MEDICINE.  163 

Press,  and  edited  by  President  Oilman,  entitled  The  Organi- 
zation of  Charities,  being  a  report  of  the  Sixth  Section  of 
the  International  Congress  of  Charities,  Correction,  and 
Philanthropy,  Chicago,  June,  1893.  In  the  last  twenty 
years  at  least  ninety-two  charity-organization  associations 
have  been  formed  and  are  now  actively  at  work  in  our 
country,  whilst  many  hundreds  exist  in  Europe.  The 
English  Charity-Organization  Society  is  also  publishing  a 
series  of  manuals,  of  which  I  mention  as  of  special  interest 
to  physicians,  one  on  the  feeble-minded  child  and  adult, 
and  one  on  the  epileptic  and  crippled.  Another  volume 
is  devoted  to  insurance  and  saving  (intimately  bound  up 
with  disease  and  the  medical  profession),  and  there  are 
others  on  food,  on  medical  charities,  on  the  training  of  the 
blind,  on  the  dwellings  of  the  poor,  on  idiots,  imbeciles, 
etc.  The  most  cursory  glance  at  these  works  will  show 
how  deeply  into  the  whole  organization  of  society  the 
seeds  of  this  ideal  are  striking  root,  and  how  intimately 
blended  are  they  or  may  they  become  with  those  of 
medicine. 

But  before  we  can  be  very  consistent  or  whole-souled 
charity  organizerers  we  must  first  clean  house  ourselves. 
We  must  practise  what  we  preach.  There  are  few  more 
outrageous  sinners  against  the  principles  of  the  organiza- 
tion than  our  profession  itself  The  London  Lancet  has 
recently  been  weeping  very  profusely  over  the  failure  of 
the  public  to  respond  with  sufficient  liberality  in  financial 
support  of  the  hospitals  of  London.  Curiously  enough, 
the  epiphora  seems  to  be  caused  by  a  respectably-sized 
beam  in  its  own  professional  eye.  To  justify  the  tears  it 
cites  the  number  of  cases  treated  in  the  one  hundred  and 
eighty-one  London  hospitals  during  1803.  The  figures 
are  so  huge  that  it  is  necessary  to  quote  them  in  full. 


164 


CHARITY-ORGANIZATION  AND  MEDICINE. 


SUMMARY  OF  TABLES. 


b. 

i 

i 

a 
u 

K 

a 
u 

Hihl 

a 

Is 

lu 

< 
B. 

z 

l-l 

M 
■J 

OS 

Q 

0 

K  a  ■» 

^5« 

General  Hospitals 

;£i7,378 

49.835 

14,027 

27.607 

4.6'4    3,476 

4,910 

J,442,447 

222,733 

Special  Hospitals 

".747 

28,426 

8,615 

14,466 

2,611 

2.74« 

1,974 

1,203,830 

20,876 

Convalescent  Hos- 

pitals 

4.069 

25,324 

7,4»9 

1 5,42 « 

68 

1,288 

209 

",974 

192 

Dispensaries 

',873 

1. 213.039 

Total 

£zS,of>7 

103,585 

30,061 

57.494 

7,293 

7.S05 

7,093 

3,871,290 

243,801 

Let  us  leave  out  of  consideration  the  in-patients  (over 
100,000)  and  the  accident  cases  (243,801),  and  fix  our 
attention  for  a  moment  upon  the  (nearly)  four-million 
visits  of  out-patients.  It  strikes  me  that  if  any  hysterics 
are  justified  in  reference  to  this  appalling  figure  it  would 
be  hysterics  of  indignation.  Can  any  conscientious  physi- 
cian, can  any  sane  man,  believe  that  this  number  of  people 
have  been  adequately  considered,  and  had  careful  diag- 
noses made,  and  discriminating  scientific  treatment  insti- 
tuted? Can  he  believe  that  a  vast  proportion  of  these 
patients  were  unable  to  pay  some  fee  for  the  service  ren- 
dered ?  The  whole  affair  begins  to  become  ludicrous.  The 
sentimental  grimace  of  the  charity-tragedy  is  plainly  broad- 
ening into  the  guffaw  of  opera  bouffe.  The  cloven  foot  of 
selfishness  on  the  part  of  those  lucky  or  powerful  enough 
to  get  in  charge  of  these  hospitals  is  all  too  plainly  evident 
to  allow  us  to  be  much  grieved  at  the  moans  and  wailings 
of  the  melodramatic  artist.  The  competition  for  these 
hospital  positions  among  the  physicians  of  London,  and 
everywhere  else,  for  that  matter,  is  vicious  and  intolerable. 
It  is  a  question  of  sauve  qui  pent,  and  After  us  the  deluge. 

But  there  are  some  3000  medical  men  in  London  not 
connected  with  hospitals  ;  what  of  them  and  of  their  pro- 
fessional interests  ?     Go  where  one  will  the  same  astonish- 


CHARITY  ORGANIZATION  AND   MEDICINE.  165 

ing  hospital-abuse  glares  at  us.  We  are  debauching  and 
pauperizing  both  the  profession  and  the  public  by  this 
gigantic  nuisance.  Money  given  for  the  endowment  or 
support  of  hospitals  is  likely  to  become  a  curse  instead  of 
a  blessing  to  humanity,  unless  certain  provision  is  made 
against  indiscriminate  free  treatment.  Indiscriminate  medi- 
cal charity  is  just  as  pernicious  as  indiscriminate  alms- 
giving. One  is  disposed  to  ask  if  it  might  not  be  well  to 
save  much  labor  by  adopting  the  plan  of  Louis  XIV  and 
Louis  XVI,  and  gratuitously  send  out  millions  of  bottles 
of  medicine  all  over  the  country,  with  accurate  directions 
"  for  the  relative  indication  "  for  taking,  etc.  Perhaps,  even 
better,  we  might  farm  the  entire  business  out  to  the  Ameri- 
can patent-medicine  syndicate ! 

We  should  also  not  forget  that  the  absorption  of  medi- 
cal energy  in  the  free  treatment  of  disease  by  those  who 
could  pay  keeps  the  profession  bound  in  the  treadmill  of 
drudgery  and  of  piddling  cures,  whilst  the  nobler  and 
infinitely  more  important  sciences  of  public  hygiene  and 
preventive  medicine  are  left  unfurthered  or  are  turned  over 
to  the  nonmedical  world.  Thus  in  this  blind  man's  race 
we  rush  impetuously  to  a  silly  suicide.* 

How  difficult  it   is  to  get  either  the  profession  or  the 


*  Specifically,  the  chief  defects  of  the  hospital  craze  are  thus  set  forth  by 
the  Charity-Organization  Society  in  a  petition  to  the  House  of  Lords : — 

1.  The  promiscuous  congregation  in  out-patient  departments  of  large  crowds 
of  persons,  who  in  most  instances  are  suffering  from  slight  ailments  for  which 
skilled  hospital-treatment  is  quite  unnecessary,  is  a  constant  hindrance  to  medi- 
cal instruction,  increases  the  discomfort  and  pain  of  those  who  are  suffering 
from  severe  maladies,  and  occasions  much  vexatious  and  needless  waiting. 

2.  The  indiscriminate  admission  to  the  benefits  of  hospitals  and  dispensaries 
tempts  many  who  could  pay  for  medical  relief  to  become  occasional  recipients 
of  charity,  and  by  degrees  habitual  paupers. 

3.  The  provision  of  gratuitous  medical  relief  to  large  numbers  of  persons, 
both  as  in-patients  and  out-patients,  without  inquiry  or  any  sufficient  regulation, 
is,  as  investigation  shows,  a  serious  obstacle  to  the  promotion  of  provident  in- 


i66  CHARITY-ORGANIZATION  AND   MEDICINE. 

public  to  take  any  interest  in  prevention !  Rather  than 
stop  the  causes  once  for  all,  all  prefer  to  peck  away  at  the 
ever-recurrent  effects.  Dr.  Benjamin  Lee  tells  me  that 
every  year  the  State  of  Pennsylvania  gives  $2(X),CXX)  or 
;^300,ooo  to  hospitals,  while  all  that  could  be  secured  for 
the  State  Board  of  Health  last  year  was  $6000. 

Up  to  the  present  generation  charity  has  been  a  blind, 
benevolent  tyrant;  now  charity-organization  proposes  to 
introduce  the  justice  of  freedom,  the  independence  of  a 
true  democracy.      Instead  of  charity  of  the  modern  sort 


stitutions  at  which  medical  treatment  can  be  secured  by  small  periodical  pay- 
ments. 

4.  Hospitals  and  free  dispensaries,  as  at  present  administered,  usually  offer 
no  special  advantages  to  those  artisans  and  laborers  who  have  combined  to 
make  provision  against  times  of  sickness,  and  there  is  no  recognized  relations 
between  these  hospitals  and  dispensaries  and  provident  institutions. 

5.  There  is  no  clear  and  definite  division  of  the  work  between  voluntary 
hospitals  and  dispensaries,  and  jwor-law  infirmaries  and  dispensaries,  but  the 
former  deal  with  cases  which  might  more  properly  be  left  to  the  poor-law,  and 
the  latter  with  cases  which,  from  their  medical  interest,  or  special  requirements, 
or  from  the  character  and  circumstances  of  the  patient,  might  more  properly 
be  treated  in  charitable  institutions. 

6.  By  the  multiplication  of  gratuitous  and  part-pay  institutions,  and  the  ab- 
sence of  regulation  or  organization,  those  medical  men  whose  practice  lies 
among  the  poorer  classes  are,  year  by  year,  more  severely  hampered  in  making 
a  livelihood. 

7.  There  is  keen  and  continuous  competition  between  hospitals  which  spend, 
year  after  year,  sums  considerably  larger  than  their  average  income  would 
justify,  and  are  thus  driven  to  resort  to  all  manner  of  contrivances  to  meet 
their  liabilities. 

8.  Year  by  year,  also,  new  hospitals  are  (sometimes  under  very  doubtful 
auspices)  established  for  the  treatment  of  special  diseases,  without  any  reference 
to  the  provision  already  available. 

9.  The  hospitals  and  dispensaries  are  often  ill-grouped  for  local  purposes, 
and  though  sometimes  a  hospital  and  one  or  more  dispensaries  are,  from  their 
position,  conveniently  placed  for  cooperation,  there  is  no  settled  relation  or 
agreement  between  them  by  which  cases  may  be  transferred  from  dispensary 
to  hospital,  and  vice  versa. 

10.  There  is  no  uniform  system  of  keeping  and  publishing  accounts. 


CHARITY-ORGANIZATION  AND   MEDICINE.  167 

we  are  to  have  the  gracious  dignity  of  personal  kindness. 
Instead  of  a  weak  sentimentalism  that  increases  the  evil, 
let  there  be  the  wise  benevolence  that  prevents  it.  Instead 
of  vicarious  almsgiving  there  must  be  a  direct  and  per- 
sonal helpfulness  that  usually  leaves  out  of  the  count  all 
financial  dealings.  The  ideal  seeks  to  cure  where  it  can, 
but  always  to  prevent  the  deplored  evil. 

What  is  the  evil  ?  Dependency.  It  is,  as  I  have  said,  a 
duality  of  shame  and  evil,  unwelcome  alike  to  giver  and 
receiver,  and  if  not  unwelcome,  more's  the  pity  I  Every 
dependent  is  an  unnecessary  and  an  expensive  burden  to 
the  community.  It  needs  only  one  observation  to  show 
how  intimately  united,  logically  and  by  the  most  absolute 
necessity,  is  the  work  of  charity-organization  with  that  of 
medicine.  There  is  hardly  a  dependent  whose  dependency 
does  not  spring  from  or  is  not  related  to  physical  or  men- 
tal abnormalism.  What  is  the  physician's  designation  of 
such  abnormalism  ?  Plainly  the  simple  word,  disease. 
The  dependent  is  the  patient,  curable  or  not,  of  society, 
and  he  is  also  the  patient  of  the  physician. 

There  are  two  classes  of  such  patients :  those  directly 
the  result  of  disease  or  defect,  and  those  indirectly  or  par- 
tially so.  In  the  first  class  we  have  the  insane,  the  idiotic, 
the  crippled,  the  blind,  the  deaf-mute,  the  senile,  the  sick 
poor,  the  epileptic.  In  the  second  class  we  have  the 
orphan,  the  criminal,  the  pauper,  the  alcoholic,  the  beggar, 
and  the  tramp. 

The  fundamental  principles  of  the  treatment  of  depen- 
dency by  the  charity-organization  societies,  are:  i.  The 
personal  relation  ;  no  patent-medicine  cure,  or  therapeutics 
by  the  wholesale.  2.  The  permanent  cure,  when  it  is  pos- 
sible, by  proper  and  thorough  means,  not  the  perpetuation 
and  increase  of  the  disease  by  doles  and  homeopathic 
similia.  3.  The  prevention  of  the  disease  in  future  by  in- 
dividual health  and  vitality.     Surely  no  principles  could  be 


i68  CHARITY-ORGANIZATION  AND   MEDICINE. 

more  strictly  medical.  Every  physician  must  heartily 
assent  to  them  and  seek  to  apply  them.  It  is  my  chief 
object  now  to  suggest  that  the  methods  advocated  by 
these  societies  are  genuinely  medical,  and  that  in  dealing 
with  these  patients  from  the  strictly  professional  standpoint, 
we  as  physicians  have  at  hand  a  powerful  therapeutic 
means  spontaneously  offered  to  us.  Ours  also  are  the 
duties  of  cure  and  of  prevention.  As  ordinary  citizens 
and  members  of  society  we  must  each  become  members  of 
the  charity-organization  societies,  and  as  physicians  we 
should  use  this  method  of  therapeutics  just  as  we  do  hos- 
pitals, climate,  nurses,  food  and  sanitation. 

In  some  respects  it  seems  a  great  pity  that  as  a  pro- 
fession we  have  allowed  the  beneficent  exotic  of  charity- 
organization  to  grow  almost  wholly  out  of  lay  ground  and 
not  in  the  sacred  soil  of  medicine.  Having  done  so,  how- 
ever, it  is  the  more  our  duty  to  nourish  it  all  in  our  power 
and  to  help  to  disseminate  its  blessed  fruitage.  It  is 
gratifying  to  learn  that  physicians  are  coming  to  recognize 
what  possibilities  of  good  lie  in  the  movement,  and  how 
they  are  utilizing  and  guiding  it  toward  splendid  results. 
We  may  with  absolute  truth  urge  that  with  our  profes- 
sional help  the  ideal  will  find  a  speedier,  a  more  solid,  and 
a  more  lasting  realization  than  without.  It  is  for  the  wel- 
fare of  the  movement  that  its  leaders  seek  to  interest  us 
and  elicit  our  sincere  and  powerful  cooperation.  We  in- 
deed rest  all  our  treatment  upon  the  personal  and  single 
consideration ;  we  must  as  therapeutists  individualize  our 
cases ;  we  also  aim  to  cure,  not  relieve  and  in  relieving 
perpetuate  the  disease  ;  above  all  things  we  too  believe  in 
prevention. 

Applying  these  principles  to  the  second  class  of  our  de- 
pendents we  find  a  multifold  variety  of  duties  and  methods 
at  once  springing  into  view.  Even  as  to  mendicancy  we 
have  an  especial  professional  function.     Begging  is  a  crime 


CHARITY.ORGANIZATION  AND  MEDICINE.  169 

against  the  law.  Let  us  help  to  put  the  law  in  action.  The 
self-exposure  of  the  crippled  and  blind,  the  shams  of  the 
pencil-peddler,  the  parading  of  suffering  to  elicit  alms — 
such  things  should  be  stopped.  They  are  usually  masked 
under  the  excusing  guise  of  physical  infirmity.  If  real 
suffering  exists,  ten  to  one  it  is  deserved,  and  even  if  so, 
there  is  a  proper  mechanism  of  relief  and  cure,  which  we 
as  physicians  can  make  operative.  It  is  better  to  hire  such 
people  to  be  warm  than  to  be  cold,  to  do  something  useful 
than  to  do  something  hideously  useless.  There  is  a  place 
and  a  possible  useful  occupation  for  every  tramp  and  every 
beggar.  Most  of  them  do  not  want  to  have  their  infirmity 
healed.  Ours  is  the  duty  of  unmasking  at  least  the  physi- 
cal fraud. 

And  we  also  know  as  few  others  the  influence  of  idleness 
in  the  production  of  pauperism  and  disease.  The  physi- 
ologic inaction  of  the  occupants  of  our  poorhouses  and 
asylums  is  a  prolific  breeder  of  disease  and  preventive  ot 
cure.  Let  us  help  to  do  away  with  this  foul  shame.  Our 
descendants  will  wonder  at  our  heathenish  cruelty  and 
shortsightedness  when  they  read  that  we  house  our  insane, 
epileptics,  paupers,  and  even  our  criminals  in  forced  idle- 
ness at  an  enormous  expense  to  the  thrifty  producer,  and 
with  multiplication  of  physical  and  mental  evils. 

Much  of  our  institutional  life  is  a  practical  reward  for 
and  promoter  of  laziness,  a  destroyer  of  the  safeguards  of 
health.  The  charity-driblets  and  free-soup  philosophy  of 
life  is  despicable.  Rather  than  cheap  and  free  food  we 
should  teach  the  poor  the  proper  choice,  the  proper  cookery, 
and  the  proper  use  of  food.  Any  American  family  wastes 
more  food  than  would  keep  a  French  family  of  the  same 
social  status,  but  it  will  be  a  long  time  before  our  people 
listen  to  Mr.  Edward  Atkinson's  advice  in  these  respects. 
A  few  years  ago  my  friend,  Mr.  Bond,  of  Cambridge,  Eng- 
land, took  charge  of  the  poor-law  administration  of  the 
IS 


I70  CHARITY-ORGANIZATION  AND   MfeDIClNE. 

city.  By  the  methods  of  charity-organization  he  has  already 
reduced  the  municipal  annual  expense  of  this  item  from 
about  ;$40,ooo  to  ;^  15,000  with  great  coincident  improve- 
ment in  the  condition  of  the  deserving  poor.  There  are 
some  218,000  out-door  senile  paupers  in  England,  and  yet 
in  twenty  years  the  mere  fall  in  the  prices  of  food,  etc., 
would  have  enabled  every  one  of  them  to  have  insured 
himself  against  pauperism  had  he  but  saved  his  excess  and 
from  1874  applied  it  in  the  way  of  insurance-premiums. 
In  Buffalo,  N,  Y.,  a  comparison  of  twelve  years  with  out- 
door relief  with  twelve  years  without  out-door  relief  showed 
a  saving  of  1^700,000 — and  also  a  saving  of  in-door  relief 
of  over  ^400,000— in  all  over  a  million  dollars,  and  a  less 
number  of  paupers  to-day  than  fifteen  years  ago. 

As  to  the  criminal,  it  is  yet  an  open  question  how  far  his 
condition  is  a  result,  direct  or  indirect,  of  congenital  or  ac- 
quired disease.  The  relation  at  least  needs  to  be  carefully 
studied  by  medical  men.  But  that  the  criminal  should  be 
an  expense  to  the  law-abiding  thrifty  is  outrageous. 

But  it  is  to  the  prevention  of  pauperism  that  we  should 
look  most  sharply.  Let  us  see,  for  example,  if  we  cannot 
avoid  the  evils  of  the  English  system  in  its  treatment  of 
destitute  children,  who  are  crushed  together  in  orphan- 
asylums  and  "  barrack  schools,"  from  200  to  1400  in  each. 
This  costs  the  producer  1^150  a  head,  almost  one-half  going 
for  officers'  salaries. 

If  we  turn  to  classes  of  depefldents  whose  conditions 
result  almost  directly  and  wholly  from  disease  we  are 
struck  by  the  magnitude  of  the  task  and  the  multiplicity  of 
methods  of  cure.  It  is  not  my  purpose,  because  of  lack 
both  of  ability  and  of  time,  to  review  the  etiology  and  sug- 
gest the  treatment  of  the  evils  of  insanity,  of  epilepsy,  of 
idiocy,  and  the  like.  It  is  only  by  the  cooperation  of  a 
thousand  minds  working  through  many  years  that  we  shall 
reach  any  satisfactory  solution,     I  desire  only  to  ask  the 


CHARITY-ORGANIZATION  AND   MEDICINE.  171 

question,  Shall  we  as  physicians,  and  especially  shall  the 
American  Academy  of  Medicine,  undertake  to  help  in  the 
great  work  ? 

As  to  the  hopeless  idiot,  the  impossibility  of  cure,  and 
the  impossibility  of  reaching  the  ultimate  causes  of  the  pro- 
duction of  this  class  of  cases,  have  led  some  to  the  question 
we  all  shrink  from  asking.  And  yet,  despite  the  dangers, 
there  are  those  who  see  no  really  valid  argument  against 
the  many  valid  ones  for  a  legalized,  public,  beneficent  sen- 
tence of  painless  death  upon  him.  We  each  silently  vote 
the  sentence  in  our  silent  prayer  that  if  we  should  become 
hopelessly  idiotic  we  would  not  wish  to  be  allowed  to  live. 

The  blind,  the  needlessly  blind,  are  the  ghosts  in  the 
empty  chairs  at  every  ophthalmologic  banquet.  We  are 
glad  that  best  efforts  are  being  made  toward  the  chief  re- 
form. Alas  !  that  we  cannot  pay  the  lobbies  to  get  a  little 
law  passed  to  prevent  much  of  the  world's  blindness. 
Politics  has  reached  such  a  state  of  degradation  that  a 
definite  sum  of  "  blood-money  "  seems  often  required  to 
secure  the  most  cryingly-needed  legislation. 

The  crippled,  the  chronically  diseased,  the  deaf-mute,  the 
prematurely  senile,  etc.,  all  have  the  most  vital  relations 
with  medicine.  We  can  do  much  to  cure  and  to  alleviate, 
and  all  may  be  made  self-supporting,  and  certainly  made 
more  happy,  by  self-help  and  self-dependence. 

Perhaps  of  all  diseased  people  the  epileptic  demands  our 
greatest  compassion,  and  it  is  precisely  he  that  reacts  most 
wonderfully  to  our  treatment.  It  is  again  sadly  strange 
that  the  best  treatment  has  been  devised  by  the  nonmedi- 
cal. Our  failure  to  cure  by  drugs  or  by  the  trephine 
should  have  stimulated  us  to  increased  effort  instead  of 
shaming  us  into  inaction.  Intellectual  and  sensitive,  other- 
wise able-minded  and  able-bodied,  the  epileptic  is  thrown 
out  of  work  and  out  of  ordinary  social  life  by  his  mysterious 
malady.     It  is  gratifying  to  know  that  the  colony-plan  has 


lya  CHARITY-ORGANIZATION   AND   MEDICINE. 

at  last  found  a  footing  in  England  and  in  America,  but  it  is 
horrifying  to  know  that  there  are  to-day  thousands  of  these 
shunned  and  shunning,  suffering  souls  deprived  of  the  hap- 
piness that  might  so  easily  be  theirs.*  There  is  probably 
nothing  in  the  world  that  is  such  an  inspiriting  example  of 
beneficent  blessedness  as  the  Bielefeld  Epileptic  Colony  in 
Germany  or  the  MaguU  Home  near  Liverpool,  England. 
Most  if  not  all  of  you  know  well  enough  about  these  places, 
and  I  need  not  weary  you  with  details.  If  not,  read  the 
account  in  the  Charity-Organization  Manual.  At  Bielefeld 
in  1 89 1  there  were  treated  1277  patients,  if  patients  they 
may  be  called  in  this  beautiful  home-like  place,  at  once 
most  hospitable,  but  most  unhospital-like.  The  colony  is 
largely  self-supporting.  At  the  Magull  Home,  a  relatively 
small  institution,  but  perhaps  all  the  better  for  that,  the 
"  home-treatment "  with  no  bromids,  or  very  little,  is  re- 
markably successful.  "  In  fourteen  of  those  who  passed 
through  the  house  during  the  year,  the  fits  had  been 
arrested  at  the  end  of  the  year."  "  In  the  case  of  twenty- 
two  patients  the  fits  in  the  first  half  of  their  stay  during  the 
year  numbered  1673,  but  in  the  second  half,  948,  a  decrease 
of  725."  Dr.  Alexander  believes  that  such  homes  may  be 
made  entirely  self-supporting.  There  is  no  idleness.  Idle- 
ness, as  Dr.  Ferrier  says,  "  increases  the  instability  of  the 
nervous  system."  The  chief  and  necessary  therapeutic 
measures  are  country-life,  home-life,  employment,  con- 
genial surroundings,  good  nourishment,  and  little  or  no 
bromid. 

I  had  a  number  of  notes  and  gathered  data  of  interest  as 
to  crippled  children  and  as  to  feeble-minded  children  and 

*  In  Germany  the  number  of  epileptics  is  about  one  per  thousand  of  the 
population.  Dr.  Peterson  puts  the  number  of  epileptics  in  New  York  State 
alone  at  double  this  number,  or  about  I2CX).  This  would  give  us  in  the 
United  States  about  130,000,  an  infinitesimal  portion  of  which  only  has  proper 
care. 


CHARITY-ORGANIZATION  AND  MEDICINE.  173 

girls, and  what  maybe  done  for  them ;  but  I  must  pass  the 
subjects  by. 

Another  reproach  of  medicine,  and  especially  of  psy- 
chology, is  insanity.  To  this  I  can  also  make  but  passing 
reference.  A  prominent  neurologist  has  lately  passed 
severe  criticism  upon  his  brother-specialists  as  regards  the 
treatment  of  insanity.  That  many  of  the  criticisms  are  just 
few  even  of  those  "  touched  "  would  deny.  But  few  would 
also  deny  that  in  many  respects  the  charges  were  often 
greatly  exaggerated,  and  that  many  qualifying  or  contra- 
dicting facts  were  left  out  of  the  count.  Such,  for  example, 
were  the  unmentioned  facts  that  in  the  city  wherein  he 
spoke  the  criticised  "  banishment  of  the  white  caps  from 
the  wards  "  had  been  of  profound  good,  and  that  the  desired 
abrogation  of  locks  and  bolts  was  also  exemplified.  Yet 
another  is  the  fact  that  there  are  nineteen  training-schools 
in  the  United  States  for  the  special  training  of  nurses  for 
the  insane.  But  whatever  has  been  done,  there  remain 
herculean  tasks  yet  to  do.  What  a  shame  it  is  that  many 
thousands  of  overactive,  unstrung  nervous  systems  are  in 
idleness,  consuming  body  and  mind,  hoplessly  and  expen- 
sively, when  the  burden  to  the  taxpayer,  to  the  physician, 
and  to  the  sufferer  might  be  greatly  lightened  or  entirely 
taken  off  by  colonization,  employment,  and  individualiza- 
tion. 

And  thus  we  ever  return  to  the  same  repeated  lesson, 
whatever  the  kind  of  dependency  we  study.  The  Charity- 
Organization  Society  has  found  a  remedy  for  much,  if  not 
all  the  evils.  It  remains  for  us  to  aid,  to  utilize,  and  to 
realize  the  clearly  realizable  ideal. 

It  corresponds,  for  example,  with  the  American  charac- 
ter to  do  things  in  a  large  and  lavish  way,  and  we  have  the 
awful  and  growing  evils  of  institutionalism,  A  dangerous 
habit  is  also  exaggerating  and  deepening  the  evil :  I  refer 
to  the  voting  of  the  taxpayer's  money  to  private  institu- 


174  CHARITY-ORGANIZATION   AND   MEDICINE. 

tions.  In  New  York  State  nearly  ;^3,ooo,ooo  a  year  are 
thus  given  to  private  institutions  for  orphan  children  and 
the  friendless.  For  charities  and  correctional  purposes  the 
State  of  Pennsylvania  gives  to  private  institutions  about 
one-third  of  all  amounts  thus  spent.  In  a  series  of  years 
this  amounted  to  about  $  1 2,000,000.  What  a  wretched  and 
criminal  blunder  !  In  politics,  as  well  as  in  sociology,  we 
need  to  learn  the  lessons  of  other  countries  and  of  other 
methods.  We  have  yet  to  perceive  all  the  reductio  ad  ab- 
surduin,  all  the  ironical  truth  of  the  pertinent  question, 
Quis  custodiet  ipsos  custodes  ?  Mechanically- working, 
military-governed,  outwardly-splendid,  noncurative  prison- 
palaces  are  not  the  proper  or  lasting  solutions  of  the  prob- 
lems of  dependency.  Charity-organization  says  we  must 
individualize  our  cases  and  get  into  personal  relations  with 
our  dependents  ;  and  charity-organization  is  right.  It  says 
we  must  seek  to  cure,  not  simply  to  endure  them  ;  that  we 
must  give  them  interesting  employment ;  that  we  must 
reward  sanity  and  self-help,  not  encourage  the  weak  to  throw 
away  self-respect;  that  we  must  get  our  dependents  into 
the  country  and  into  an  approximation  to  home-life,  etc. 
And  in  all  this  charity-organization  is  right,  and  the  way 
of  the  world  is  wrong.  Let  us  adopt  and  carry  into  prac- 
tice the  better  therapeutic  methods  ! 


HOSPITALISM.* 

Definition. — The  dispensary-disease,  or  hospitalism,  is 
a  contagious,  epidemic,  ingravescent  neurosis  of  civilization, 
limited  (it  is  to  be  hoped)  as  regards  time  to  the  present 
fin  de  siecle  and — as  regards  geographic  distribution — to 
urban  populations  ;  it  attacks  three  considerable  classes, 
the  professional  philanthropist,  the  commercial  physician, 
and  the  social  sponger,  and,  so  far  as  medicine  is  concerned, 
is  characterized  by  a  maniacal  propensity  to  professional 
suicide,  and  to  the  spread  of  the  disease  by  the  inoculation 
of  the  will  with  the  germs  of  the  affection. 

Etiology. — In  brief,  there  are  two  chief  etiologic  factors. 
The  first  consists  in  the  morbid  desire  of  the  lazy  charity- 
monger  to  perform  his  duties  vicariously ;  the  second 
springs  from  the  ambition  of  certain  physicians  to  "  get  on, 
regardless."  From  the  interactions  and  mutual  comple- 
mentings of  these  two  cachexiae  arises  the  distinct  type  of 
disease  called  hospitalism.  These  two  agencies  may  need 
an  added  word  of  explanation.  The  first,  the  habit  of  the 
professional  philanthropist,  united  to  the  universal  desire  to 
satisfy  conscience  with  vicarious  charity,  is  a  widespread 
evidence  of  religious  and  ethical  anemia,  resulting  in  multi- 
form sociologic  denutrition  and  malfunction.  The  unregen- 
erate  layman,  the  civilized  savage  of  modern  times,  is  sub- 
ject to  a  strange  hypnotic  delusion  that  the  universal  law 
of  the  biologic  world  antedating  civilization  is  an  egregious 


*A  paper  read  before  the  American  Academy  of  Medicine,  at  Baltimore, 
May  4,  1895.  Published  first  in  the  Bulletin  of  the  Academy,  1895,  and  in 
the  Medical  News  of  June  22,  1895. 

•75 


176  HOSPITALISM. 

error.  This  law  has  up  to  now  proceeded  on  the  assump- 
tion that  health  and  vitality  are  the  conditions  of  permitted 
life,  and  that  this  health  and  vitality  are  based  essentially 
upon  pay  or  equivalence  of  service,  upon  personal  self-de- 
pendence, desire,  and  effort.  The  modern  philanthropist 
jauntily  sets  aside  the  wisdom  of  the  ages,  the  necessities  of 
evolution,  and  all  that,  and  says  he  has  a  much  better  idea 
of  how  to  conduct  the  universe  than  has  God.  Acting 
upon  this  antithetic  science  he  says  the  conditions  of  social 
health  are  the  encouragement  of  personal  dependence  and 
the  increase  of  pauperism.  His  remarkable  therapeutic 
theory  is  that  to  cure  a  disease  we  must  administer  a 
remedy  that  in  health  would  produce  exactly  the  symptoms 
of  the  disease.  He  therefore  seeks  to  cure  pauperism  and 
dependence  by  increasing  the  number  of  paupers  and  de- 
pendents. 

There  is  nothing  so  delightful  to  weak  souls  as  the  unc- 
tuous self-flattery  of  benevolence,  and  there  are  few  things 
more  satisfying  than  to  rid  one's  self  of  a  nagging  duty.  We 
thus  have  two  classes  of  citizens  :  The  tremendously  large 
class  that  pay  others  to  perform  their  personal  duties,  and 
the  very  small  class  of  those  that  hire  themselves  out  as 
agents  of  the  first  class.  Charity  and  the  personal  relation 
to  the  poor  and  sick  are  thus  deftly  avoided  by  this  copart- 
nership, and  alms-giving  and  institutionalism  deceptively 
act  as  vicegerents  of  the  genuine  officers.  This  is  the  first 
factor  of  the  dispensary-disease. 

The  second  factor  is  confined  to  the  medical  profession 
itself.  Like  most  other  people,  certain  doctors  desire  to 
"  get  on,  regardless."  The  vicarious  and  professional  phil- 
anthropist offers  him  the  means  in  the  shape  of  institutions 
for  the  treatment  of  all  other  diseases  except  the  hospitalic 
variety.  (Perhaps  in  the  progress  of  time  and  with  the 
growth  of  virtue  we  shall  have  a  special  hospital  in  every 
large  city  where  may  be  treated  those  in  the  acute  and  vio- 


HOSPITALISM.  177 

lent  stages  of  the  terrible  disease,  Epidemic  Hospitalism.) 
If  the  enterprising  doctor  can  get  himself  appointed  "  Pro- 
fessor," or  "  visiting  physician  "  to  one  of  the  numerous  in- 
stitutions supplied  by  the  vicarious  philanthropist  he  will 
at  once  become  better  known  ;  he  will  be  furnished  abun- 
dant "  clinical  material ;  "  he  will  get  ahead  of  his  less  fortu- 
nate brothers  ;  and  he  will  assuredly  '*  get  on,  regardless." 
Lachrymose  sentimentalism  and  philanthropic  vanity  are 
appealed  to,  endowments  follow,  wills  and  codicils  to  wills 
are  made,  and  lo !  there  arise  the  lofty  walls,  the  spacious 
wards,  the  waiting-rooms  and  operating-rooms,  the  crowded 
out-patient  departments,  the  boards  of  wealthy  trustees, 
and  the  not-to-be-forgotten  medical  staff  itself. 

Sometimes  the  physician  bound  to  get  on,  the  business 
doctor,  sans  phrase,  conceals  his  ambition  with  the  broad 
mantle  of  institutionalism  itself,  and  it  appears  that  the  pa- 
tient (the  doctor-patient  afflicted  with  the  disease)  indulges 
in  a  mild  monomania  of  enthusiasm  for  his  particular 
medical  college,  for  medical  science,  and  for  the  purposes  of 
medical  instruction.  He  solemnly  contends  that  without 
an  abundance  of  clinical  material  the  best  medical  instruc- 
tion would  be  impossible  and  medical  colleges  would  lan- 
guish. His  by-standing  confreres,  not  yet  afflicted  with  the 
disease,  smile  pityingly,  both  at  the  patient's  delusions  and 
at  the  sorry  belief  of  the  patient  that  he  is  deceiving  those 
about  him  as  to  the  real  motives  of  his  mind.  Those 
healthy-minded  attendants  know  that  there  will  always  be 
an  abundance  of  clinical  material  supplied  by  the  worthy, 
the  deserving,  and  the  really  poor,  without  the  appeal  of 
competitive  medical  charity  to  those  who  could  pay  for 
medical  service.  They  also  know  that  nine  times  out  of 
ten  his  medical  college  itself  has  no  ethical  or  scientific 
raison  d'etre  whatever,  but  is  itself  simply  another  bit  of 
objective  evidence  of  personal  and  selfish  ambition  on  the 
part  of  those  who  are  "  getting  on,  regardless  "  by  means 
16 


178  HOSPITALISM. 

of  their  "  Professorships  "  and  the  advertisement  of  official 
position.  Ifone  has  been  vouchsafed  a  clear  glance  into 
the  inferno  of  political  chicanery  and  undiluted  deviltry 
that  often  go  on  to  secure  a  professorship  in  a  modern 
medical  college,  he  will  have  a  perfect  demonstration  of  the 
altruism  and  the  purity  of  the  "  charity  "  at  work  among 
the  candidates.  Men  do  not  smash  the  entire  Decalogue 
and  commit  all  the  venial  sins  in  order  to  get  an  oppor- 
tunity to  be  kind  to  the  sick  or  to  teach  boys  how  to  cure 
disease. 

The  etiology  of  hospitalism  may,  therefore,  be  epitomized 
as  consisting,  first,  in  the  morbid  desire  of  the  well-to-do  to 
rid  themselves  of  real  charity  and  of  the  duty  of  personal 
hand-to-hand  and  face-to-face  kindness,  by  the  self-decep- 
tive, vicarious  makeshift  of  almsgiving;  and,  second,  to  the 
get-on-regardless  physician,  reckless  of  the  good  of  the 
profession,  greedy  of  office  and  of  patients,  even  though 
they  are  of  the  nonpaying  variety.  Professorialism  is  only 
a  variant  of  the  disease  of  hospitalism,  not  a  distinct  type 
of  disease. 

Symptomatology. — The  disease  afflicts  three  distinct 
classes  of  society,  and  has  a  somewhat  different  symptom- 
complex  in  each  class. 

I.  The  first,  the  endowing  class,  many  of  them  placed 
by  death  beyond  the  reach  of  criticism,  is  composed  of 
those  that  mistakenly  preferred  to  patch  up  effects  rather 
than  altogether  to  prevent  them,  and  who  left  their  money 
without  proper  stipulation  of  the  conditions  under  which 
their  trust  should  be  administered.  Theirs  is  a  mournful 
error.  There  are  so  many  ways,  especially  in  medicine,  of 
preventing  disease,  of  killing  the  causes  of  diseases,  instead 
of  curing  the  individualized  results,  that  it  is  shameful  that 
they  did  not  add  wisdom  to  pity,  and  to  kindness,  intellect. 
If  we  could  but  show  the  benevolent  how  much  greater  and 
more  speedily  reached  would  be  the  effect  of  their  charity 


HOSPITALISM.  179 

if  applied  to  the  encouragement  of  preventive  medicine  in- 
stead of  to  curative  medicine :  One  well-equipped  and  en- 
dowed laboratory  of  hygiene,  of  bacteriology,  or  of  sanitary 
science  would  do  more  for  humanity  than  a  dozen  hos- 
pitals. To  prevent  diphtheria  is  a  million  times  better  than 
to  keep  everlastingly  treating  children  ill  with  diphtheria. 

But  the  unwise  endower  of  hospitals  committed  another 
intellectual  sin — and  in  this  world  intellectual  error  at  last 
and  always  results  in  millionfold  moral  error.  He  failed  to 
condition  his  gift  with  the  necessary  limitation  that  as  a 
result  of  his  charity  none  but  the  needy  and  deserving 
should  profit  by  it.  Without  that  condition,  in  the  muta- 
tions of  time,  his  kindness  becomes  an  engine  of  evil,  both 
to  them  who  receive  and  to  them  who  administer. 

The  endower  is  sometimes  the  State  or  the  city.  The 
fact  itself  proves  that  giving  to  hospitals  has  so  long  been 
recognized  as  right,  per  se,  that  no  regard  need  to  be  paid 
as  to  how  the  money  is  spent.  It  is  a  most  remarkable 
fact,  this  of  giving  away  millions  of  the  public  money  with- 
out a  single  stipulation,  and  hardly  without  a  demand  for 
accounting.  When  given  to  public  officers  for  State 
asylums  and  hospitals  the  precedent  is  bad  enough,  but  to 
church,  sectarian,  and  college  hospitals,  and  even  to  private 
institutions — this  decidedly  is  to  be  thought  twice  about. 

In  the  scramble  of  the  competitive  medical-charity  de- 
bauch, the  hungry  institutions  have  hit  upon  a  plan  of 
making  the  universal  public  a  universal  endower.  Every- 
body must  be  made  to  feel  how  good  he  is  and  to  experi- 
ence the  pleasures  of  almsgiving.  We  thus  have  every 
imaginable  form  and  invention  of  beggary  spurred  to  the 
limit  of  endurance  and  of  impertinence.  Hospitals  Sun- 
days, fairs,  "  dances  for  sweet  charity,"  masked  gambling, 
and  heaven  knows  what  else  are  instituted.  It  might,  with 
self-restrained  people  it  certainly  should,  suggest  a  little 
prudence  to  see  how  prominent  in  getting  up  and  pushing 


l8o  HOSPITALISM. 

on  these  things  are  the  wives,  mothers-in-law,  the  personal 
friends,  or  the  relatives  of  the  ambitious  visiting  physician, 
or  would-be  professor,  the  advertiser,  the  newspaper 
doctor,  et  hoc  genus  omne.  The  motive  of  self-seeking  is 
too  often  but  poorly,  very  poorly,  concealed,  and  sometimes 
it  is  thought  good  enough  to  boast  about. 

2.  The  second  class,  the  lay-public,  likewise  suffers  from 
the  disease,  although  it  thinks  itself  very  cunning  and 
lucky  in  having  the  disease.  There  are  more  diseases  than 
hysteria  that  people  love  to  suffer  with,  and  the  dispensary- 
affection  is  an  example.  There  is  no  evil  that  is  more 
ruinous  than  the  awful  one  of  communism.  When  a  man 
gets  that  poison  in  his  blood  he  will  be  a  curse  to  the  world 
until  he  is  well-hanged,  thoroughly  dead,  and  everlastingly 
buried.  There  is  no  curse  so  fatal  as  the  curse  of  desiring 
to  get  something  for  nothing.  It  is  the  half-hidden  rock 
upon  which  the  very  ship  of  state,  democracy  itself,  is  run- 
ning headlong.  Nothing  is  serving  so  subtly  and  so 
powerfully  to  prevent  physical  and  social  health,  and  to 
keep  the  world  in  the  thraldom  of  disease,  as  medical  beg- 
gary and  medical  communism.  When  a  man  buys  medical 
service  for  nothing  he  pays  a  high  price  for  it.  He  culti- 
vates the  habit  of  lazy  reliance  on  medical  aid,  and  grows 
careless  of  hygiene.  The  people  think  they  are  fortunate 
in  being  treated  for  nothing,  but  instead  of  curing,  the 
"treatment"  really  fastens  the  disease  perpetually  upon  the 
very  heart  of  the  body  politic.  The  medical  profession  is 
bound  to  the  treadmill  of  curing  individual  cases  and  the 
effects  of  disease,  instead  of  shutting  off  the  causes  of  dis- 
ease. The  profession  is  so  hardly  pressed  ^nd  so  poorly 
paid  that  its  members  have  no  time  to  prevent  disease. 
One  of  the  great  curses  of  medicine  is  the  commercial 
medical  colleges,  with  the  resultant  superabundance  of 
doctors.  The  hospital  and  dispensary  disease  is  encour- 
aged by  (nay,  is  one  of  the  direct  results  of)  the  commer- 


HOSPITALISM.  i8i 

cial  medical  college,  and  the  vicious  circle  is  completed  by 
the  mere  reversal  of  the  process.  The  rivalries  and  ambi- 
tions and  "  politics  "  of  competitive  medical  charities,  dis- 
played every  day  stark  naked  to  the  public,  at  once 
arouse  and  disgust  the  world,  and  keep  low  that  standard 
of  professional  dignity  and  honor,  so  that  the  profession 
cannot  demand  and  command  health.  Hygiene  and  pre- 
ventive medicine  could  at  once  halve  the  death-rate  if  we 
had  the  respect  of  the  community,  if  we  but  spoke  clearly 
and  could  carry  to  realization  the  known  laws  of  life-saving. 

If  the  cunning  Communist  only  got  what  he  thinks  he 
is  sponging  !  But  every  physician  knows  well  enough  he 
does  not  get  it.  How  can  one  man  diagnosticate  the  dis- 
eases of  a  hundred  patients  with  scientific  precision  and 
treat  them  effectively  in  an  hour  ?  I  may  not  speak  dog- 
matically of  other  departments  of  medicine  than  my  own, 
but  I  must  confess  that  out  of  hundreds  of  cases  of  hospital 
refraction  work  that  I  have  afterward  examined  in  my 
private  office  I  have  never  yet  seen  one,  my  own  included, 
that  was  correct.  If  only  the  deserving  poor  were  treated, 
there  would  not  be  the  crowds  ;  if  the  physician  received 
even  the  smallest  fee,  that  fact  would  make  the  patient  the 
master  instead  of  the  obsequious  sponger;  and  then  the 
doctor's  work  would  have  to  be  better,  or  the  natural  laws 
of  competition  would  soon  settle  the  fate  of  the  bungler, 
and  the  "  hustler,"  and  the  "  cooker  "  of  hospital  statistics. 

I  am  not  at  all  certain  as  to  the  effect  upon  the  social 
world  of  the  free  treatment  of  patients  with  syphilis  and 
gonorrhea  and  alcoholism — a  fact  that  constitutes  a  large 
part  of  hospital-disease.  There  are  two  sides  to  that  ques- 
tion. I  am  not  a  little  doubtful  as  to  the  ethics,  and  even 
as  to  the  worldly  wisdom  of  turning  the  hospital  into  an 
annex  of  the  bagnio  and  the  bar-room,  a  convenience 
whereby- the  natural  punishment  of  the  infractions  of  the 
sexual  and  hygienic  laws  (upon  which  life  itself  rests)  may 


l82  HOSPITALISM. 

be  escaped.  It  is  not  quite  certain  that  we  can  get  the  best 
of  God  in  such  ways.  There  is  entirely  too  much  of  the 
"  prophylaxis-of-gonorrhea "  business  tainting  the  whole 
profession,  and  literally  befouling  much  hospital-practice. 
One  might  more  dogmatically  decide  as  to  the  wisdom  of 
the  common  social  commingling  of  the  prostitute  and  the 
innocent  in  the  hospital-wards  and  the  dispensary  waiting- 
rooms. 

3.  But  the  physician  is  interested  in  his  profession,  and 
the  influence  of  hospitalism  upon  our  guild  is  becoming 
pernicious  in  the  extreme.  Take  the  simple  fact  of  hos- 
pital-manners. I  well  understand  that  neither  the  posses- 
sion of  the  doctorate  degree,  nor  the  possession  of  the 
knowledge  and  skill  it  should  certify,  can  make  a  man  a 
gentleman.  But  there  is  no  doubt  that  the  instant  influence 
of  the  necessity  of  treating  crowds  of  mingled  deserving 
poor  and  of  indistinguishable  spongers  acts  disastrously 
upon  the  physician's  disposition  and  manners.  The  very 
work  wherein  gentle  kindness  is  as  the  sunshine's  benedic- 
tion over  the  gracious  harvest-fields  of  benevolence  is  trans- 
formed into  bitterness  and  harshness.  What  is  more  dis- 
gusting than  arrogance  and  dictatorialness  in  a  physician  ? 
What  is  more  common  in  hospitals  and  dispensaries  ?  A 
dog  judges  of  his  master's  mood  by  the  manner  and  the 
//w^r^  of  voice,  although  he  understands  hardly  a  word  of 
language  proper.  Every  hospital-patient,  likewise,  forms 
quick  conclusions  as  to  the  man's  character  under  whose 
care  he  comes,  and  instead  of  gratitude  for  the  service 
rendered  the  ungentlemanly  physician  is  breeding  through 
the  community  a  condition  of  mind  that  bodes  no  good  for 
medicine.  The  patient  thinks  himself  sharp  to  secure  some 
benefit  from  grudging  surliness,  and  the  overworked,  non- 
paid,  half-excusable  doctor  is  glad  to  get  through  his  job 
in  one  or  another  wretched  way.  "  He  has  the  European 
habit  and  style  " — such  is  the  patient's  verdict.     The  pa- 


HOSPITALISM.  183 

tients  know  well  enough  when  they  are  looked  upon  as 
"clinical  material,"  and  when,  on  the  other  hand,  they  are 
sympathetically  treated  as  unfortunate  human  beings,  whom 
we  have  the  privilege  of  helping. 

And  this  leads  to  the  thought  that  nothing  so  speedily 
and  surely  as  hospitalism  leads  to  the  degeneration  of  the 
physician  into  the  therapeutic  or  pathologic  fiend.  If,  as 
is  well  known,  an  interne  or  visiting  physician  hangs  about 
a  hospital  beyond  a  certain  time,  the  more  certainly  will  he 
fail  as  a  practicing  physician.  Every  day  in  the  hospital 
teaches  him  to  dissociate  disease  from  humanity,  and  to  fix 
his  attention  upon  morbidity,  per  se.  He  learns  to  treat 
disease  and  not  the  diseased  human  being.  The  laboratory, 
necessary  as  it  is,  runs  the  danger  of  becoming  the  execu- 
tion-chamber of  practical  therapeutics.  Every  disease  must 
be  seen  through  the  lens  of  personality  before  it  can  be 
thoroughly  understood.  There  is  no  disease,  there  are 
only  diseased  tissues — and  the  tissues  are  alive,  and  there 
is  a  living  soul  unifying  all  the  tissues  into  that  strange 
product  of  life.  Homo ;  and  Homo  is  not  one  individual, 
but  includes  conditions,  family,  heredity,  age.  The  rage 
for  "  clinical  material  "  is  becoming  a  genuine  mania,  itself 
a  downright  disease,  a  disgrace  to  curative  medicine. 
Street-car  placards  and  column-long  newspaper  "  ads"  so- 
liciting patients  are  part  of  the  expenses  of  some  hospitals. 
From  a  daily  paper  I  clipped  the  following  racy  account ; 
it  has  too  much  of  the  air  of  truth  to  be  more  than  half  lie  : 

"A  local  employment  agency  has  instituted  a  unique  depar- 
ture. A  few  day^  ago  an  advertisement  appeared  in  the 
morning  paper  which  read:  'Wanted — A  young  man  suffering 
from  pulmonary  or  heart  disease.  Examination  free.'  Inquiry 
at  the  office  of  the  advertiser  elicited  the  information  that  the 
'young  man'  was  wanted  for  the  various  hospitals  about  town, 
which  were  anxious  to  get  live  subjects  for  clinical  demonstra- 
tion.    'The  applicants  are  received  here,'  said  the  manager  of 


I84  HOSPITALISM. 

the  agency,  *  and  are  promptly  examined.  The  eligible  ones, 
that  is,  those  who  are  found  to  be  victims  of  the  two  diseases  in 
question,  are  given  cards  for  presentation  at  the  hospitals  which 
we  serve.  They  are  paid  well  for  their  services,  and  they  suffer 
no  inconvenience  from  their  experience  at  the  hands  of  the  sur- 
geons. Sometimes,  in  fact,  they  reap  benefits  which  they  had 
not  counted  on,  some  of  them  regaining  complete  health  under 
the  treatment.  So  you  see  pulmonary  and  heart  affections 
command  a  sort  of  premium.  Sometimes  we  find  among  the 
applicants  some  cases  even  more  interesting  than  we  had 
expected.  These  men,  of  course,  command  more  money  than 
the  ordinary  sufferers.'  " 

But  all  these  methods  of  trapping  game  are  often  only 
diversions  of  the  strong,  subdominant  motive  of  practice- 
hunting  and  success-advertising.  Just  as  the  great  pro- 
fessors give  lectures  at  medical  colleges  in  order  to  get 
consulting  practice,  so  will  men  consent  to  bang  through  a 
lot  of  "  charity-cases  "  at  the  hospital  and  dispensary  in 
order  to  have  the  eclat  of  the  position  and  the  fame  that  in 
one  way  or  another  brings  private  practice.  Sometimes, 
indeed,  it  is  not  by  the  indirect  means  of  the  fame  that  pa- 
tients are  secured,  but  upon  one  excuse  or  another — the 
modus  operandi  is  well  known — the  hospital  is  made  a  very 
direct  feeder  of  the  private  office. 

And  what  brutal  injustice  is  the  indiscriminate  treatment 
of  hospital-crowds  to  the  younger  members  of  the  profes- 
sion, and  to  those,  the  immense  majority,  who  are  not  of 
the  elect — the  poor  fellows  who  are  neither  professors, 
chiefs,  nor  visiting  physicians;  it  is  among  the  lay  poor 
that  the  professional  poor  must  work.  After  years  of 
heroic  preparation  the  young  graduate  finds  the  very 
teachers  who  have  taken  his  money  for  instruction  treating 
questionless  and  gratis  those  who  should  be  his  own  pay- 
patients.  I  have  a  profound  sympathy  for  the  young  and 
unsuccessful   physician.     He   has   been  outrageously  de- 


HOSPITALISM.  185 

ceived,  and  is  daily  being  outrageously  treated  by  men  of 
his  own  guild,  to  whom  he  has  a  natural  right  to  turn  for 
aid  in  this  matter.  If  he  settle  in  the  country,  the  reckless- 
ness of  the  city-hospital  and  dispensary  government  pursues 
him  like  a  fury.  The  non-discriminating  urban  physician 
receives  the  country  patient  without  question.  It  is  thought 
that  the  distance  from  which  the  countryman  comes  can- 
cels all  scruples  as  to  duty  to  one's  colleagues.  Medical 
ethics  have  at  best  very  narrow  geographic  limitations.* 
Only  the  countryman's  local  physician  knows  whether  he 
is  able  to  pay  or  not — but  how  often  is  the  matter  inquired 
about  by  the  city  brother  ?  Even  in  private  practice  the 
rights  of  the  distant  local  physician  are  but  little  considered  ; 
how  much  less,  then,  are  they  considered  at  the  dispensary  ? 
And  thus,  to  summarize,  are  we  cruelly,  consciously, 
persistently  committing  professional  suicide.  Every  noodle- 
head  knows  that  that  which  costs  no  thought  or  labor  is 
not  appreciated  by  men,  and  yet  we  tumble  over  each  other 
in  our  mad  rush  to  do  our  grand  work  for  nothing.  We 
make  the  most  valuable  thing  the  most  despised  by  our 
pusillanimous  politics,  until  the  poor  public  learns,  instead 


*  A  remedy  for  the  abuse  of  medical  charity  is  offered  by  "  A  Young  Sub- 
scriber "  in  a  letter  to  the  Medical  Record.  He  suggests  that  the  victim  of 
this  abuse  "  the  next  time  and  whenever  he  has  need  of  a  consultation,  or  has 
a  patient  to  send  to  a  specialist,  avoid  the  man  who  daily  robs  him  by  indis- 
criminate dispensary-work,  and  pick  out  instead  one  who  regards  the  rights  of 
his  fellows.  There  are  men  at  the  heads  of  dispensary  classes  throughout  the 
city  enjoying  large  special  practices,  who  boast  that  they  have  no  care  for  the 
financial  standing  of  their  dispensary-cases  so  long  as  they  furnish  the  required 
material  for  clinical  purposes,  and  as  for  the  complaining  doctors,  they  say, '  Let 
them  go  and  be  blanked.'  So  long  as  they  can  do  this  and  keep  the  support 
of  the  general  practitioner,  they  will  hold  the  same  views.  The  moment  they 
find  it  affecting  their  pockets  they  may  at  least  cease  to  pride  themselves  upon 
their  dirty  treatment  of  their  professional  brethren.  Let  the  non-dispensary 
men  look  to  their  rights,  and  they  will  soon  have  less  wrongs." — Boston  Med. 
and  Surg.  Jour.,  Alarch  21,  iSg^. 


l86  HOSPITALISM. 

of  respect,  contempt  of  us.  Where  is  the  hospital  for  free 
legal  advice?  And  yet  which  is  the  most  honored,  medi- 
cine or  the  law  ?  Oh  !  for  a  breath,  nay,  a  blast,  of  profes- 
sional self-respect  that  would  sweep  us  into  unity.  Why 
should  we  not  have  some  organization,  some  esprit  de  corps  ? 
Even  thieves  preserve  some  sort  of  honor  among  them- 
selves. 

Treatment. — Let  us  briefly  consider  the  treatment  of 
the  disease.  What  can  be  done  to  abate  this  graceless 
nuisance  ?  A  thousand  good  hearts  and  wise  minds  are 
racked  by  this  problem.  It  is  almost  impossible  to  find  a 
way  out.  In  fact,  we  have  gotten  ourselves  so  pitiably  dis- 
eased that  we  can  hardly  hope  for  much  else  than  a  life  of 
chronic  invalidism,  at  least  so  far  as  this  generation  is  con- 
cerned. The  disease,  if  one  may  so  speak,  is  intensely 
chronic.  One  thing  is  certain,  we  cannot  make  men  moral 
by  act  of  Congress.  There  is  not  one  great  general 
remedy.  Everyone  of  us  must  take  the  matter  up.  The 
Kingdom  of  Heaven  is  within  you.  The  influence  of  one, 
of  each  individual,  steadily  and  patiently  opposing  the 
wrong,  will,  in  time,  transform  the  whole.  Every  one  of  us 
has  power ;  each  one  of  us  has  been  a  sinner ;  each  one  may 
do  little  or  much  toward  stemming  the  evil  trend. 

And  first  as  to  the  endowers,  whether  individual  or  com- 
munal, let  us  preach  incessantly  and  repetitively  the  truth 
that  indiscriminate  charity  is  unadulteratedly  sinful  and 
cruel.  Every  penny  given  without  inquiry  as  to  merit  is 
simply  hiring  people  to  be  sufferers.  In  a  great  civilized 
country,  only  last  year,  there  was  discovered  to  be  a  fiend- 
ish manufactory  of  cripples  and  victims  to  excite  pity  and 
secure  alms  from  the  "  charitable."  Children's  eyes  were 
gouged  out  and  every  bone  in  their  bodies  broken,  in 
order,  by  their  exposure,  to  stir  up  the  sensibilities  of  the 
"  kind-hearted,"  who,  by  their  gifts,  kept  the  manufactory 
"  running  on  full  time."     Just  as  certainly  does  indiscrim- 


HOSPITALISM.  187 

inate  charity  operate  now,  and  here,  and  everywhere. 
God's  command  is  infinitely  stern,  but  it  is  just  as  infinitely 
compassionate,  that  in  the  sweat  of  the  brow  shall  we  earn 
our  bread.  The  lives  of  East  Indian  ryots  are  quite  as 
happy,  fully  as  comfortable,  and  far  more  moral  than  those 
of  an  American  mob  of  train-wrecking  strikers  ;  and  yet  the 
annual  income  of  the  ryot  is  not  one-thirtieth  of  that  of  the 
striker. 

Let  it  be  clearly  understood  that  there  is  to  be  no  chill- 
ing of  sympathy,  no  killing  of  kindness,  no  less  giving, 
because  of  this  law  of  life.  There  is  to  be  all  the  more — 
but  the  sympathy  is  to  be  intellectualized,  the  kindness  is 
to  be  made  effective,  and  the  giving  is  really  to  stop  the 
suffering,  and  not  increase  it. 

We  must  teach  the  rich  that  every  endowment  of  hospi- 
tals and  dispensaries  must  be  conditioned,  narrowly,  rigidly 
conditioned,  upon  the  law  that  only  emergency-cases  and 
the  absolutely  deserving  poor  are  to  be  treated  in  hospitals. 
When  importuned  to  contribute  on  hospital-Sundays,  or 
to  attend  entertainments,  charity-balls,  etc.,  etc.,  let  us  re- 
fuse, and  publicly  refuse,  unless  the  managers  of  such  hos- 
pitals publicly  state  that  rigid  exclusion  of  those  able  to 
pay  something  for  medical  services  is  carefully  and  sys- 
tematically assured. 

The  indiscriminateness  of  the  doled-out  charity  of  the 
hospitals  is  a  natural  result  of  the  stupid  indiscrimination 
of  endowers.  Thesepour  out  the  money,  year  after  year, 
and  century  after  century,  in  reckless  disregard  of  the  laws 
of  economics,  of  the  real  needs  of  the  community,  and  of 
the  experiences  of  other  lands.  Hospital-farms  for  epilep- 
tics, for  the  insane,  homes  for  convalescents,  homes  for  the 
dying,  special  hospitals  of  various  kinds,  especially  for  the 
tuberculous — these  and  more  are  pitifully  wanted,  and  yet 
the  old  ways  and  the  old  evils  are  stupidly  increased.  If 
we  could  only  have  an  omniscient  or  even  half-wise  Czar 


I88  HOSPITALISM. 

to  direct  almsgiving  ;  if  it  were  only  someone's  business  to 
instruct  people  how  to  give  their  money.  At  present  it 
depends  either  upon  haphazard  or  upon  the  cunning  wiles  of 
some  interested  person.  Rich  plebeians,  right  versed  as  to 
oil,  or  beer,  or  dry  goods,  are  made  presidents  or  trustees, 
flattered  to  the  top  of  their  bent  with  the  bauble  of  ofifice  and 
authority  in  the  things  of  which  they  haven't  even  a  spark  or 
a  glimpse  of  knowledge,  all  in  order  to  wheedle  endowments 
out  of  them.  These  go  on  building  wings  and  additions  to  old 
evils,  until,  as  with  church-building,  the  historic  momentum 
results  in  monstrous  aggregations  of  multiform  uselessness 
or  abuse.  And  every  day  or  two  the  daily  newspaper- 
reporter  gets  hold  of  some  scandal,  a  dying  patient  refused 
admission  to  hospitals,  a  fisticuff  of  rival  visiting  physicians, 
the  "politics"  of  rival  hospitals,  etc.,  etc.,  and  regales  his 
readers  with  it.  All  the  time  the  evil  grows,  until  one  of 
these  fine  days  the  donkey  endower  will  suddenly  awaken 
to  a  realization  of  the  fact  that  he  has  been  imposed  upon, 
and  that  his  ears  are  several  inches  longer  than  they  should 
be.  Then  he  will  resign,  shut  up  his  pocket-book  very 
tight,  and  genuine  medical  charities  and  properly  conducted 
hospitals  will  suffer.  To  arouse  the  profession  to  the 
danger  it  is  incurring  by  the  abuses  of  medical  charity,  the 
danger  of  a  sudden  reaction  whereby  proper  medical 
charity  will  be  stopped,  this  has  been  the  motive  I  have 
had  in  mind  in  writings  upon  this  subject  during  the  last 
six  or  eight  years.  It  hardly  needs  the  saying  that  one 
earnestly  desiring  the  curing  of  a  disease  hardly  wishes  to 
kill  the  patient,  yet  some  foolish  folk  affect  to  think  that 
those  who  speak  of  the  disease  of  the  hospitals  would  des- 
troy all  hospitals  as  incurably  diseased.  The  physician, 
even  of  the  specialty  Hospitalism,  hardly  desires  to  become 
a  Reign-of-Terror  guillotinist.  Nothing  is  more  divinely 
beautiful  than  a  noble  hospital,  rightly  managed,  and  illus- 
trating at  once  the  science,  the  art,  and  the  benevolence  of 


HOSPITALISM.  189 

medicine.  But,  according  to  the  old  maxim,  corruptio 
optimi  pessima,  and  a  hospital  endowed  by  wealthy  hypo- 
crites, managed  by  medical  advertisers,  and  filled  by  social 
parasites,  is  as  bad  as  the  other  is  good. 

In  the  hospitals  and  dispensaries  of  England  and 
Wales,  2,855,644  patients  were  treated  in  1878,  while  in 
1893  the  number  was  almost  four  millions  (3,985,263),  an 
increase  of  noteworthy  proportions.  At  the  same  time  the 
number  of  physicians  has,  of  course,  also  increased.  In 
1882  there  was  one  medical  man  to  1703  people,  whilst  in 
1893  there  was  one  to  every  1427 — that  is,  each  medical 
man  has  250  less  people  in  his  clientele.  If  this  is  true  in 
England,  where  medical  education  and  medical  charity 
have  preserved  at  least  the  tradition  of  sanity,  what  must  it 
be  in  the  United  States  ?  In  order  not  to  be  charged  with 
invidiousness,  let  us  take  the  experience  of  a  foreign  insti- 
tution. I  assure  you,  however,  illustrations  could  be  had 
very  much  nearer  home.  St.  Thomas'  Hospital,  of  London, 
has  an  annual  income  of  ;^285,ooo,  and  appeals  urgently 
for  more  money.  A  writer  in  the  Medical  Press  and  Circji- 
lar  thus  further  describes  the  condition  of  this  institution : 

"  That  Hospital  was  chartered  by  Edward  VI,  and  splendidly 
endowed  with  landed  estate,  and  up  to  the  year  1862  it  enjoyed 
a  high  reputation,  and,  so  far  as  I  know,  did  its  work  efficiently. 
In  that  year  its  site  at  London  Bridge  was  invaded  by  the  South- 
eastern Railway,  and  the  Hospital  received,  I  think,  $2,300,000 
as  compensation.  That  to  the  common  mind  would  seem  to  be 
a  tidy  sum  with  which  to  build  a  new  hospital,  especially  as  the 
ground  which  it  occupies  was  secured  on  the  cheapest  terms, 
having  just  been  reclaimed  by  the  Thames  Embankment,  but 
when  architects  and  builders  got,  as  they  did,  a  firm  hold  of  the 
job,  it  turned  out  to  be  quite  insufficient  to  realize  their  aspira- 
tions. They  succeeded  in  producing  not  only  a  heavy  deficit, 
but  a  veritable  white  elephant — a  building  about  twice  the  nec- 
essary size,   containing    bed-accommodation   one-third   greater 


190  HOSPITALISM. 

than  could  be  maintained  by  the  income  of  the  institution,  and 
constructed  in  every  detail  in  the  most  expensive  manner.  It 
was  stated  by  the  Royal  Prince  at  this  meeting  that  five  of  the 
wards  are  now  empty,  there  being  no  money  to  keep  them  full, 
but  it  was  not  mentioned  by  his  Royal  Highness  that  several  other 
wards  are  filled  by  paying  patients,  most  of  whom  are  in  no 
sense  deserving  of  charitable  relief,  and  ought  to  be  in  their  own 
houses,  nursed  and  treated  at  their  own  expense,  and  not  at  the 
expense  of  the  charitable. 

**  It  would  not  be  just  to  blame  the  present  administrators  of 
the  Hospital  for  the  mad  extravagance  of  their  predecessors  of 
thirty  years  ago,  but  for  the  financial  administration  of  the  Hos- 
pital at  the  present  day  they  are  responsible,  and  I  may  ask  a 
question  or  two  on  that.  I  find  from  Burdetf  s  Annual  that 
every  bed  maintained  costs  I512.37  per  annum,  and  every  pa- 
tient admitted  represents  an  outlay  of  1^38.83,  the  highest  rate 
among  the  twenty-three  London  general  hospitals  save  four. 
This  does  not  mean  that  the  sick  patient  costs  directly  any  such 
sum,  for,  as  far  as  I  can  make  out  from  the  figures,  his  mainte- 
nance, nursing,  and  treatment  do  not  consume  more  than  one- 
third  of  the  amount,  the  remainder  representing  outlay  in  salaries 
to  officials,  pensions,  and  other  matters  which  are  only  of  indi- 
rect benefit,  if  at  all,  to  the  sick  patient.  When  I  find  that  the 
most  efficient  provincial,  Scotch,  and  Irish  hospitals  can  and 
do  keep,  nurse,  and  treat  a  similar  patient  all  told  for  just  half 
the  money,  I  am  moved  to  ask  what  claim  has  St.  Thomas'  to 
public  sympathy  ?  Not  all  the  royal  princes,  dukes,  archbishops, 
and  millionaires  in  existence  will  persuade  me  that  a  hospital 
which  builds  beyond  its  means,  spends  its  resources  like  water, 
and  refuses  to  retrench,  deserves  to  be  subsidized  with  ^500,000 
or  any  other  sum." 

As  to  the  public,  every  one  is  a  teacher,  and  may  make 
his  voice  heard  against  indiscriminateness.  I  plainly  tell 
my  patients,  and  the  occasion  arises  nearly  every  day, 
that  they  cannot  get  as  good  medical  service  at  the  free 
dispensary  as  at  the  private  oflfice,  and  that  private  treat- 


HOSPITALISM.  191 

ment  is  far  cheaper  than  the  treatment  for  which  nothing 
is  paid.  I  think  it  our  duty  to  stigmatize  the  hospitals  and 
give  them  a  bad  name.  We  can  hardly  exaggerate  the 
truth  in  this  respect.  Let  us  laugh  to  scorn  the  clap-trap 
delusion  of  the  masses  that  at  the  dispensary  they  will  be 
treated  by  the  great  Professor  Bigwig,  and  that  therefore 
they  will  be  better  treated  than  by  yesterday's  graduate, 
Dr.  Nobody.  We,  of  course,  know  the  silliness  of  such  an 
illusion  ;  we  know  that  often  at  the  Hospital  Bigwig  gets 
all  the  honor  and  young  Nobody  does  all  the  work.  Ten 
to  one,  with  his  care  and  desire  to  establish  a  reputation, 
young  Nobody  would  do  the  better  work  of  the  two,  even 
if  Bigwig  had  the  case  himself  Then  there  is  the  wasted 
time  of  the  patient,  the  crowds,  the  shocking  surroundings, 
the  shame  of  being  a  pauper  !  Let  us  use  the  blunt,  brutal 
word,  and  drive  it  into  their  heads — hospitals  and  dispen- 
saries are  for  paupers!  It  will  hurt  a  little,  but  it  will  do 
good.  Every  older  physician  has  some  younger  friend 
and  colleague  who  needs  the  poor  patients  and  their  poor 
fees.  Why  not  do  the  patients  and  the  friend  a  real  ser- 
vice with  one  word  of  advice  ? 

As  to  the  profession,  if  one  has  anything  to  do  with  a 
hospital,  one  can  do  not  a  little  in  the  interest  of  discrim- 
ination, A  trained  mind  can  learn  to  detect  the  old  clothes 
put  on  for  the  visit,  the  odor  of  whisky,  the  concealment  of 
ability  to  pay  something.  There  should  be  no  mincing  of 
words  with  such  folk.  Every  patient  caught  shamming 
should  be  half-insulted  and  unceremoniously  turned  out. 
Let  them  go  to  "  other  places  where  they  will  be  wel- 
comed ;"  the  "  other  places  "  will  thereby  secure  for  them- 
selves an  evil  name  in  time,  which  will  prove  a  poor  invest- 
ment. 

There  is  one  half-evil  that  is  condemned  by  some 
and  practiced  by  many,  but  it  has  the  excuse  that  it  is 
somewhat   better   than   the    hospital    wholesale   business. 


192  HOSPITALISM. 

The  drug-store  doctor  is  not,  perhaps,  the  best  type  of  pro- 
fessional man,  but  he  is  not  so  bad  as  Professor  Bigwig. 
By  the  drug-store  doctor  I  do  not  mean  the  druggist  who 
is  not  an  M.D.,  but  who  in  fact  prescribes  much  as  if  he 
were.  That  problem  is  fast  settling  itself  by  the  commer- 
cial medical  college  selling  diplomas  to  the  druggist. 
What  is  meant  is  the  genuine  doctor  who  also  keeps  a 
drug-store,  but  who  charges — well,  nothing  for  advice  and 
everything  for  filling  the  prescription  !  Such  a  product  of 
our  Jin  de  siecle  medical  civilization  is  in  fact  a  direct  reac- 
tion and  result  of  indiscriminate  medical  charity.  And 
since  the  doctor  gets  something,  however  roundabout,  for 
his  work,  I  am  not  inclined  to  scold  him  much.  When 
hospitalism  is  whipped  out  of  the  field  it  will  be  time  enough 
for  all  good  men  to  turn  in  and  run  out  the  drug-store 
doctor. 

Still  another  form  the  reaction  has  taken  is  that  illus- 
trated by  the  physician  who,  while  pursuing  essentially  the 
same  plan  as  the  drug-store  doctor,  carries  it  out  by  the 
vice  versa  method.  I  mean  the  charging  for  advice  but 
giving  the  medicine  gratis.  This  is  certainly  a  step,  nay, 
two  steps,  in  advance,  and  hits  two  heads  well-deserved 
and  good-resounding  whacks  with  a  single  shillalah.  Who 
does  this  at  once  "  gets  even  "  with  the  soulless  hospital 
and  with  the  nostrum-selling,  prescribing  druggist,  both 
having  tough  skulls  that  need  many  downright  doughty 
thwacks  !  Perhaps  the  same  club  may  in  time  split  wide 
open  another  cranium,  that  of  the  patent-medicine  man. 
The  remarkable  progress  in  the  arts  of  modern  pharma- 
cology makes  possible,  and  many  other  reasons  make  justi- 
fiable, the  dispensing  of  one's  own  medicines. 

In  England  medical  clubs  are  already  deemed  unmiti- 
gated nuisances  and  deplorable  grievances.  With  us  they 
have  not  yet  become  so,  but  we  are  fast  entering  the  same 
smooth  descensus  Averni.     But  it  seems  to  me  even  this 


HOSPITALISM.  193 

phase  of  the  wholesale  medical  business  is  preferable  to 
hospitalism — a  road,  that  if  not  to  Avernus,  trends  toward  a 
lake  into  which  certain  tormented  swine  did  once  rush 
somewhat  hastily,  with  much  relief  to  their  mental  dis- 
ease. 

One  finally  asks,  Why  should  each  physician  not  have  his 
own  private  dispensary  ?  Behold  his  empty  office  and  his 
unoccupied  time!  Why  should  he  deimpersonalize  his 
charitable  work  and  give  himself  namelessly  to  an  institu- 
tion— a  sort  of  a  corporation  which  proverbially  has  neither 
a  body  to  be  abused  nor  a  soul  to  be  saved  ?  Better,  it 
seems  to  me,  and  far  better,  would  it  be  to  do  the  service 
and  get  the  gratitude  one's  self.  In  such  cases  there  is  a 
real  and  a  scientific  service  on  the  physician's  part,  and  a 
real  and  not  a  sham  gratitude  on  the  part  of  the  patient. 
Private  individuals  should  go  into  private  competition  with 
the  hospitals.  The  hospitals  can  be  whipped  out  every 
time.  And  when  one  corrects  the  botch-work  of  the  hos- 
pitals, the  time  and  the  health  of  the  patient  have  been  so 
patently  spared  that  the  thank-offering  of  an  unexpected 
and  shyly  given  fee  is  much  larger  than  one  would  have 
thought  of  receiving  from  a  "  charity-case."  One  may 
perhaps  hear  the  sneer  that  it  would  be  unprofessional  for 
a  hungering  young  doctor  to  solicit  gratis-cases  at  his  pri- 
vate office — and  ten-to-one  the  sneer  would  come  from  one 
who  hangs  his  name  on  big  sign-boards  from  his  dispensary 
doors,  and  advertises  himself  or  his  hospital  in  cheap  news- 
papers and  on  theater  bulletin-boards.  I  would  be  far 
from  justifying  advertising  ways  on  the  part  of  the  younger 
man,  but  decidedly  when  the  advertisement  of  the  hospital 
means  the  advertisement  of  the  men  running  the  hospital, 
then  I  excuse  the  young  non-hospital  advertiser  first  and 
quickest.  When  Bigwig  quits  the  trickery,  young  Nobody 
will  soon  do  so  also. 
17 


194  HOSPITALISM. 

I  would  like  to  add  a  suggestion  that  seems  never  to 
have  occurred,  either  to  our  profession  or  to  its  most  excel- 
lent coworking  sister,  that  of  the  trained  nurse.  Thousands 
of  women  have  heroically  and  successfully  struggled  under 
the  greatest  difficulties  to  secure  their  special  training  and 
ability.  Thousands  more  are  preparing,  but  already  the 
profession  is  overcrowded.  Why  should  they  not  take  up 
the  hospital-business  as  a  work  for  which  every  considera- 
tion of  natural  and  acquired  fitness  shows  them  adapted? 
The  hospital  business  is  a  sort  of  a  special  boarding-house 
business.  I  see  no  reason  why  in  America  we  should 
drift  into  the  huge  barracks-hospital  system  with  droves  of 
daily  thousands.  The  individualization  of  cases  is  the  first 
requisite  of  clinical  wisdom,  and  the  individualization  of  hos- 
pitals is  another  professional  desideratum.  There  might  be 
hundreds  of  single-house  hospitals  or  homes  for  the  sick, 
adapted  to  different  diseases,  and  to  all  purses,  in  all  of  our 
cities,  in  which  nurses  should  be  the  responsible  owners  or 
controllers,  and  to  which  any  physician  might  upon  regular 
business  arrangements  send  his  patients,  and  relieve  him- 
self of  all  except  the  medical  responsibilities,  the  nurse  as 
now  carrying  out  his  orders.  There  is  something  belittling 
— I  will  not  use  a  harsher  word — in  the  custom  of  physi- 
cians going  into  the  boarding-house  business — euphemisti- 
cally called  the  private  hospital  or  the  private  sanitarium. 
The  physician  should  not  be  interested  in  or  bothered  by 
the  chambermaid's  work,  the  price  of  beef,  or  the  rental  of 
rooms.  This  is  all  alien  to  his  proper  work,  not  seldom 
inimical  to  it,  and  even  leading  sometimes  to  scandalous 
conditions.  But  placed  in  the  hands  of  a  woman  specially 
educated  for  exactly  that  sort  of  thing,  it  would  at  once 
elevate  the  dignity  of  her  own  nurse's  profession,  lessen  the 
shame  of  the  impertinent  and  bulimic  hospital,  and  regu- 
late and  systematize  the  physicians'  proper  labor 


HOSPITALISM.  195 

But  when  all  has  been  said  and  done  the  hospital  abuse 
will  continue  unless  professional  sentiment  is  aroused. 
Trustees,  professional  philanthropists,  and  the  public  will 
gladly  continue  to  eat  the  oyster  of  medical  service,  and 
leave  the  shells  to  our  asinarian  rivalries.  Possibly  there 
will  be  no  great  and  thorough  cure  of  the  evil  so  long  as 
we  remain  a  divided  profession,  so  long  as  local  medical 
societies  never  touch  professional  abuses  and  wrongs,  so 
long  as  censors  have  no  moral  sense  and  are  never  incensed 
— surely  not  so  long  as  the  American  Medical  Association 
numbers  as  members  but  one  in  a  hundred  American  medi- 
cal men.  As  certainly  also  there  will  be  no  reform  while 
like  a  lot  of  unspanked  school-boys  the  members  of  that 
Association  hanker  after  and  quarrel  over  the  right  to 
advertise  nostrums  and  to  associate  with  quacks,  and  while 
the  cynical  wrap  themselves  in  the  cloak  of  respectability, 
hold  themselves  aloof,  and  grin  sardonically  from  the  safe 
retreats  of  success.  The  two  immediate  and  demanded 
conditions  of  all  reform  are  : — 

1.  That  medical  men  shall  have  a  large  share  in  the 
government  of  hospitals,  thus  making  them  responsible  for 
abuses  and  rendering  it  possible  to  stop  this  old  monkey 
trick  of  getting  chestnuts  by  our  stupid  professional  paws 
thrust  into  the  fire. 

2.  The  principle  of  the  Charity-organization  Society 
must  be  made  a  part  of  all  hospital  management.  It  would 
be  well  if  a  genuine  copartnership  could  be  realized  be- 
tween the  local  Charity-organization  Society  and  every 
hospital.  At  least,  there  must  be  at  every  hospital  an 
officer  whose  sole  duty  it  shall  be  to  discriminate  between 
the  worthy  and  unworthy — and  he  must  be  made  to  dis- 
criminate, too. 

Postscript. — From  the  Lancet  of  June  8,  1895,  we  learn 
that  during  the  year  1894  there  were  treated  gratuitously 
in  the  London  hospitals  : — 


196  HOSPITALISM. 

General  Hospitals  : 

In-patients, 52,080 

In  Convalescent  Homes, 5>585 

Accidents  and  Emergencies, 264,379 

Out-patients,  number  of  visits,     ....  1,684,448 

Special  Hospitals  : 

In-patients, 24,963 

In  Convalescent  Homes, 2,526 

Accidents  and  Emergencies, 25,660 

Out-patients  (visits), 1,205,688 

Cottage  Hospitals  and  Convalescent  Homes  : 

In-patients, 24,963 

In  Convalescent  Homes, 39 

Accidents  and  Emergencies, 244 

Out-patients  (visits),      13,858 

Dispensaries  : 

Out-patients, 1,204,045 

Totals, 4,508,478 

The  Lancet,  in  pitifully  begging  for  more  funds  to  carry 
on  this  tremendous  labor,  notes  that  whereas  in  1890  the 
total  number  of  out-patient  visits  was  2,429,219,  in  1894 
the  number  has  risen  to  the  perfectly  absurd  figures  of 
4,108,039.  What  more  convincing  argument  could  be 
adduced  for  lessening  the  amount  of  subscriptions,  and 
thus,  perhaps,  stopping  this  riotous  debauchery  of  both 
profession  and  public  ? 


THE   ETIOLOGY,   DIAGNOSIS,   AND  TREAT- 
MENT OF  THE  PREVALENT  EPIDEMIC 
OF  QUACKERY.* 

You  have  all  heard  of  the  doctor  who  would  never  eat 
roast  duck  because  the  impolite  animal  had  always  been 
so  personally  insulting  to  him  in  its  remarks.  Doubtless 
you  may  wonder  if  I  am  not  also  a  bit  impertinent  in  choos- 
ing the  subject  of  quackery  as  a  theme  of  talk  before 
physicians  regularly  educated  and  presumably  despising 
irregularity  and  sectarian  medicine  with  just  indignation. 
I  assure  you  it  is  not  because  I  suspect  you  of  infidelity — 
at  least  of  a  very  pronounced  type.  I  simply  wish  to  give 
you  a  hint  of  the  difficulties  and  temptations  you  will 
encounter  when,  as  physicians  loyal  to  science  and  modest 
self-respect — no  science,  you  know,  without  unselfishness 
and  modesty — you  come  in  sharp  contact  with  the  evils  of 
modern  sham  medicine.  The  temptation  to  compromise 
will  then  come  with  subtle  but  decided  force.  I  said  I 
would  not  suspect  you  of  positive  infidelity,  but  as  science 
always  consists  in  finer  discriminations  and  the  recognitions 
of  small  differences  that  escape  ordinary  observation,  so, 
with  civilization,  is  coming  the  influx  of  a  thousand  grades 
of  deception  and  fraud. 

The  question  is  always  suggested :  How  much  of  a 
quack  is  he  ?  You  may  have  no  doubt  about  Sharp  &  Co.'s 
Safe  Cure,  the  seventh  daughter  of  the  seventh  daughter, 

*  An  address  delivered  by  invitation  of  the  Faculty  of  the  Medical  Depart- 
ment of  the  BuflFalo  University,  before  the  Graduating  Class,  May  3,  1892. — 
From  The  Medical  News,  May  7,  1892. 

197 


198  EPIDEMIC  OF  QUACKERY. 

or  the  pictured  old  man  leering  at  you  from  the  theatrical 
bulletin  boards  with  Mephisto  grin  as  he  lovingly  clasps 
to  his  arms  a  bottle  of  sarsaparilla.  But  how  is  it  with 
the  very  great  and  the  very  regular  Dr.  Supersuspect, 
who  writes  puffs  of  secret  proprietary  preparations,  or  who 
praises  one  especial  brand  of  wine — after  receiving  a  fine 
case  of  "samples" — as  a  sure  cure  for  influenza.  How 
about  Dr.  Slydog,  who  fills  his  reception-rooms  with 
hospital  dummies,  or  who  makes  his  patients  come  many 
times  for  the  relief  of  a  simple  ailment,  that  if  cured  at  once 
would  result  in  too  small  a  bill — or,  who  tells  them  all 
their  symptoms  are  very  serious,  but  that  he  has  caught 
the  disease  just  in  time?     Are  these  gentlemen  quacks  ? 

Dear  old  John  Phoenix  complained  that  our  use  of 
adjectives  was  entirely  too  vague.  If  a  man  were  called 
good,  he  wanted  to  know  just  exactly  how  good  you 
thought  him.  If  "  Sally  who  lives  in  our  alley"  should 
be  thought  beautiful,  is  that  the  only  adjective  that  could 
be  applied  to  Helen  of  Troy?  John,  therefore,  proposed 
to  prefix  a  number  to  each  adjective  that  should  indicate 
just  the  degree  of  perfection  desired.  If,  in  your  calm 
and  dispassionate  opinion,  Sally  is  as  beautiful  as  Helen, 
then  you  would  call  her  100  beautiful,  though  perhaps 
your  friends  might  think  her  only  25  beautiful.  If  we 
apply  the  principle  to  quacks,  we  have  excellent  results 
that  will  enable  us  to  ticket  them  with  a  fair  degree  of 
accuracy.  For  instance,  take  the  street-corner  man  who 
sells  Wizard  Oil  with  negro-minstrel  accompaniment  and 
four  white  stallions ;  he  gathers  a  lot  of  money  from  the 
crowd  and  then  drives  off  at  a  gallop;  he  is  evidently  a 
100  quack,  pure  and  simple.  Take  Keeley  next :  in  order 
not  to  exaggerate,  let  us  put  him  at  98  or  99.  Then  the 
Hahnemannian  Knights,  according  to  the  degree  of  their 
medical  education  and  the  weakness  of  their  potentizations, 
may  be  ranged  from  95  to  97.     The  metaphysical  Healers, 


EPIDEMIC  OF   QUACKERY.  I99 

being  sincere  but  ignorant,  should  find  their  level  at  80  or 
70  perhaps.  Where  must  we  put  the  "  vivopaths,"  the 
"  physio-medicals,"  the  "  bio-chemicals,"  the  "  manupaths," 
and  all  the  motley  crowd,  unnameable,  indescribable  ? 
Where  should  we  grade  the  cunning  fellows  that  are  cling- 
ing desperately  to  the  coat-tails  of  respectability  and  medi- 
cine, but  who  are  neither  respectable  nor  medical,  except 
in  externals  ?  Surely  not  under  50.  Where  shall  be 
placed  the  fellows  who  receive  "presents"  from  drug-stores 
and  instrument-makers,  who  write  therapeutic  articles  on 
drugs  that  they  know  nothing  about,  or  run  dispensaries 
as  feeders  for  the  private  office?  Can  they  come  nearer 
than  25?  Then  the  "brilliant-operation  men"  whom  the 
newspaper  reporters  so  easily  fool,  the  college  professors 
and  hangers-on,  who  in  blowing  the  collegiate  horn  pianis- 
simo, opportunely  emphasize  the  note  of  their  own  private 
and  personal  trombone  fortissimo !  In  all  such  cases  the 
individual  conscience  must  decide. 

Quackery  may  be  likened  to  a  poor  artificial  eye — 
everybody  else  can  see  through  it  except  the  patient. 
Strange  beyond  all  strangeness  is  the  gullibility  of  the 
patient, — his  devotion  to  his  duper.  Populus  vult  decipi — 
which  being  modernized  means,  the  mob  loves  hum- 
bug. 

But  however  disgusting,  the  fact  is  explainable.  The 
deep-seated  grudge  and  suspicion  of  the  populace  for  scien- 
tific medicine  and  the  secret  love  with  which  it  turns  to- 
ward its  magic-mongering  humbuggers  is  evolutionally 
but  a  survival  of  the  time  when  medicine  was  nothing  but 
magic, — an  atavistic  return  to  primitive  modes  of  thought 
and  therapeutic  superstition.  And  it  is  also  profoundly 
pathetic, — an  appallingly  serious  fact.  The  scientific  stu- 
dent of  sociology  watches  the  inrooting  of  institutional 
weeds  and  fruitless  brush  that  the  future  civilization  must 
grub  out  and  burn  with  costly  labor  and  sacrifice.     The 


200  EPIDEMIC  OF  QUACKERY. 

student  of  heredity  and  psychology  sees  the  hardening 
of  modes  of  thought  and  habit  that  must  bring  only 
pain,  or  misapplied  or  useless  function.  The  sincere 
physician  sees  disease  permeating  unborn  babes,  and  scien- 
tific progress  crippled  and  unutilized  by  reason  of  popular 
perversity. 

But  a  further  explanation  of  the  peculiar  and  rejuvenated 
power  of  modern  medical  charlatanism  consists  in  the  fact 
that  it  is  not  only  a  survival  of  half-extinguished  medieval 
fires,  flaming  up  with  temporary  and  dying  brilliancy,  it  is 
also  a  "  combine  "  with  modern  civilized  money-making 
and  unscrupulous  politics.  It  is  not  only  an  atavism, 
it  is  also  an  avatarism, — present-day  cupidity  is  engrafting 
itself  upon  ancient  superstition, — a  marriage  of  medieval 
magic  mummery  and  money-making,  so  that  the  sly 
cunning  of  the  politician  uses  the  stupid  monkey's  paw 
to  pull  the  chestnuts  of  profit  out  of  the  fire  of  human 
suffering. 

Nowhere  else  is  this  fact  so  certainly  seen  as  in  the  his- 
tory and  actual  outworkings  of  that  consummate  example 
of  civilized  quackery  called  Homeopathy.  An  hour's  study 
of  Hahnemann's  works  would  convince  any  convincible 
person  that  this  sorry  specimen  of  nineteenth-century 
medievalism  is  a  disgrace  to  civilization ;  and  yet  it  is  fash- 
ionable. Laughed  out  of  Europe,  it  has  sought  and  found 
a  home  among  Americans,  infinitely  receptive  of  every 
form  of  opera  bouffe  whimsicality  and  rampant  rascality. 
If  its  lay  adherents  had  the  faintest  conception  of  the  hide- 
ous absurdities  on  which  it  is  built,  and  the  trickery  by 
which  it  lives,  they  would  be  sickened  with  disgust.  The 
distinctive  principles  that  make  it  differ  from  scientific  medi- 
cine are  the  following  delectable  Hahnemannian  hocus- 
pocuses  : — 

I,  The  cause  of  human  disease  is  either  the  "miasm" 
of  sycosis,  of  syphilis,  or,  in  overwhelming  proportion,  the 


EPIDEMIC  OF  QUACKERY.  201 

itch.*  With  marvelous  inconsistency,  however,  the  origin 
of  all  disease  is  held  to  be  beyond  the  discovery  of  the 
human  mind,  supernatural,  hyperphysical,  a  disturbance  of 
our  "  dynamis  "  or  soul  life.  Diagnosis  of  disease  is,  there- 
fore, impossible,  and  thus  the  very  first  requisite  of  cure, 
the  knowledge  of  the  cause  of  morbid  conditions,  is  de- 
clared incomprehensible  and  scorned. 

2.  The  more  you  weaken  or  dilute  a  drug,  the  stronger 
it  becomes.  Hahnemann's  own  words  are:  "A  homeo- 
pathic dose  is  augmented  by  increasing  the  quantity  of 
fluid  in  which  the  medicine  is  dissolved."  Oliver  Wendell 
Holmes,  who  has  tried  to  drown  this  pestiferous  sect  with 
logic  and  laughter  for  a  quarter  of  a  century,  calculates  the 
oceans  of  water  in  which  a  grain  of  medicine  must  be  dis- 
solved in  order  to  "potentize"  it  to  suit  Hahnemann. 
Mathematically,  the  thirtieth  "  potentization "  would  re- 
quire a  body  of  water  equal  in  amount  to  480,769  worlds 
the  size  of  our  own  in  which  to  dilute  a  physiologic  dose 
of  medicine.  Hahnemann  himself  could  not  get  it  "thin 
enough,"  and  so  finally  gave  all  medicine  by  the  nose,  by 
"  olfaction,"  or  smelling.  And  yet  medicine  so  thin  as  this 
has  effects  that  only  a  madman  would  dream  of  ascribing 


*  It  is  sometimes  said  that  no  man  could  have  been  so  asinine  as  to  ascribe 
to  the  itch  such  profound  powers,  but  using  Hahnemann's  own  words,  as 
quoted  by  that  most  excellent  writer,  Prof.  Nathan  Jacobson,  of  Syracuse 
[Journal  of  the  American  Medical  Association,  March  5,  1890),  psora  is  the 
only  real  fundamental  cause  and  source  of  all  the  other  countless  forms  of  dis- 
ease figuring  as  peculiar  and  definite  diseases  in  books  on  pathology  under  the 
names  of  nervous  debility,  hysteria,  hypochondriasis,  mania,  melancholy,  idiocy, 
madness,  epilepsy  and  convulsions  of  all  kinds,  softening  of  the  bones  (rha- 
chitis),  scoliosis  and  kyphosis,  caries  of  bone,  cancer,  varices,  pseudoplasms, 
gout,  hemorrhoids,  icterus  and  cyanosis,  dropsy,  amenorrhea,  hemorrhages  from 
the  stomach,  nose,  lungs,  bladder,  or  uterus,  asthma  and  suppuration  of  the 
lungs,  impotency  and  sterility,  sick  headache  (hemicrania),  deafness,  cataract 
And  glaucoma,  renal  calculus,  paralysis,  deficiency  of  the  special  senses,  and 
pains  of  every  variety. 
18 


202  EPIDEMIC  OF  QUACKERY. 

to  it.  A  purely  inert  powder  like  lycopodium,  administered 
in  unimaginably  minute  doses,  will,  according  to  Hahne- 
mann, produce  1608  distinct  symptoms,  covering  a  period 
of  fifty  days.  One-millionth  of  a  millionth  of  a  millionth 
of  a  grain  of  common  table-salt  produced  1349  symptoms, 
including  headache,  vomiting,  cardiac  and  lung  troubles, 
disturbance  of  sight,  hearing,  and  so  on. 

The  method  of  potentization  is  by  shaking.  Hahnemann 
would  not  advise  above  two  shakings  for  fear  of  making  the 
dose  too  strong.  The  great  apostle  of  homeopathy,  Lutze, 
in  an  address  that  has  reached  at  least  forty-two  editions, 
says  that  an  old  man  was  cured  of  persistent  vomiting  by 
means  of  a  glass  of  water  that  Lutze  had  magnetized  by 
simply  holding  it  in  his  right  hand.* 

3.  To  cure  a  disease,  give  a  medicine  that  in  a  well  per- 
son would  cause  the  disease,  or  Something  as  near  to  it  as 
possible, — that  is  the  holy  nonsense  of  similia  siinilibus  cu- 
rantur.  By  a  grain  of  a  drug  diluted  in  millions  of  oceans 
of  water,  you  are  supposed  to  substitute  a  drug- disease  for 
the  natural  disease;  and  the  "instinctive  vital  force"  will 
turn  and  "go  for"  the  natural  disease,  because  the  vital 
.force  has,  as  it  were,  been  made  mad  and  spurred  on  by 
the  drug  disease.f 

*  He  concludes  "  that  if  pure  water  can  be  so  enriched  in  medicinal  virtue 
by  simple  contact  with  the  hand  as  to  cure  a  disease  of  years'  duration,  how 
much  more  must  this  power  grow  if  a  properly  diluted  drug,  whose  peculiar 
powers  experience  and  provings  have  taught,  be  subjected  to  constant  shakings 
in  the  hand  until  it  becomes  enormously  efficient."  Further,  he  says :  "  The 
poisonous  properties  are  removed  from  a  drug  through  its  dilution,  while  its 
special  peculiarities,  so  to  speak,  its  soul,  remains,  and  by  rubbing  and  shaking 
becomes  vivified  and  strengthened  by  human  magnetism." 

f  Hahnemann's  own  words  again  :  "  By  administering  a  medicinal  potency 
exactly  in  accordance  with  the  similitude  of  symptoms,  a  somewhat  stronger, 
similar  artificial  morbid  affection  is  implanted  upon  the  vital  power,  deranged 
by  a  natural  disease ;  this  artificial  affection  is  substituted,  as  it  were,  for  the 
weaker  similar  natural  disease  (morbid  excitation),  against  which  the  instinct- 


EPIDEMIC   OF   QUACKERY.  aoj 

It  is  worthy  of  this  lunatic  medicine  that,  reeking  with 
medievalism,  it  should  claim  to  be  the  "  new  school,"  and 
call  "  old  school  "  that  system  which,  by  instruments  of 
precision,  bacteriology,  experimental  research,  and  a  hun- 
dred scientific  methods  of  which  no  homeopathist  ever 
originally  dreamed,  is  endeavoring  to  cure  and  prevent 
disease.  It  is  worthy  of  this  new  school  that  it  should 
pretend  to  practice  Hahnemannism,  while  secretly  using 
any  medicinal  agents  and  in  physiologic  doses.  Made 
according  to  Hahnemann's  theories,  made  as  it  is  to-day 
pretended  they  are  made,  one  could  harmlessly  eat  a 
stomachful  of  their  sugar  pellets,  supposed  to  be  deadliest 
poison. 

Not  an  instrument  of  precision,  not  a  bacillus,  not  a 
ptomain  or  leucomain,  not  a  single  measure  of  genuine 
therapeutics  or  experimental  research,  not  a  single  dis- 
covery of  the  thousands  that  make  up  the  body  of  modern 
scientific  medical  truth  and  power,  not  one,  not  one  was 
ever  discovered  by  a  homeopath.  Their  greatest  discovery 
I  know  of  is  that  the  human  iris,  by  its  tints  and  fleckings 
and  colors,  denotes  the  parts  and  the  particular  ailments  or 
wounds  of  the  patient's  body  diseased  or  injured.*  I  have 
the  recent  catalogue  of  a  homeopathic  drug  store  in  New 


ive  vital  force,  now  only  excited  to  stronger  effort  by  the  drug  affection,  needs 
only  to  direct  its  increased  energy;  but,  owing  to  its  brief  duration,  it  will  soon 
be  overcome  by  the  vital  force,  which,  liberated  first  from  the  substituted  arti- 
ficial (drug)  affection,  now  again  finds  itself  enabled  to  continue  the  life  of  the 
organism  in  health."  The  wondrous  clearness,  logic,  and  correspondence  with 
the  facts  of  pathology  herein  displayed  make  the  statement  a  fitting  corner- 
stone for  a  lot  of  lunatics  and  sharpers  to  build  a  system  of  philosophy  and 
medicine  upon ! 

*  Die  Iris,  nach  den  neuen  Entdeckimgtn  des  Dr.  Ignaz  von  Peczely  ; 
also,  Die  Augendiagnose  des  Dr.  Ignaz  von  Peczeiy,  etc. ;  von  Emil  Schlegel, 
Tiibingen,  1887.  Spots  in  parts  of  the  iris,  according  to  location,  mean 
wounds  of  the  ear,  the  shin,  a  syphilitic  tumor,  lung-disease,  prolapse  of  the 
uterus,  etc.,  etc. 


204  EPIDEMIC  OF  QUACKERY. 

York,  in  which,  to-day,  among  thousands  of  filthy  things, 
or  rather  names  of  things,  offered  for  sale  are  the  following 
"  morbific  products,  nosodes,"  etc.,  offered  in  high  potencies  : 

"  Lice  insects,"  either  of  the  three  varieties:  "  serpents," 
"  tarantulas,"  and  "  crickets."  You  can  buy  bottled  sun- 
light, nay,  the  sun  himself;  or  you  have  the  choice  of  the 
blue  rays,  the  yellow  rays,  bottled  galvanism,  or  faradic 
electricity,  etc,  "  Snow  "  and  "  ice,"  or  "  moonlight "  or 
the  "  east  wind,"  are  at  your  command  for  ten  cents  a 
•'  graft;"  it  is  not  the  germs  or  material  particles,  but  the 
disease  itself — Bright's,  catarrh — any  that  you  will ;  but  you 
can  also  have  the  "  pus  from  a  carbuncle,"  from  "  Pott's 
disease,"  etc.  You  can  buy  "  Brahma  "  himself,  it  seems  ; 
or,  if  you  are  sad,  you  can,  for  ten  cents,  have  "  tears  of  a 
young  girl  in  great  grief  and  suffering ;  "  the  "  salt  of  the 
brain  secreted  from  a  gentleman's  scalp  with  the  perspira- 
tion ;  "  a  silk  handkerchief  eaten  by  a  cow  and  taken  from 
the  stomach  in  a  hard  ball ;  during  the  three  years  she 
never  had  a  calf."  One  of  the  most  interesting  and  sug- 
gestive items  of  the  catalogue  is  simply  entitled  "  Omnia." 

If  one  quotes  Hahnemann  or  the  elder  homeopathists, 
the  Hahnemannians  say  "  this  is  misrepresentation,"  and 
that  "  in  modern  progress  we  have  advanced  beyond  all 
that."  And  if  one  quotes  the  modern  homeopathists  more 
versed  in  the  art  of  mystification,  but  at  heart  equally 
absurd,  it  is  said  these  do  not  represent  true  homeopathy. 
I  have  quoted  both  ancient  and  modern  somewhat  exten- 
sively, not  because  I  have  any  special  grudge  against  this 
School — far  from  it — but  because  its  adherents  are  the 
most  numerous  and  coherent  body  of  sectarians,  and  be- 
cause they  have  succeeded,  in  this  quack-ridden  land,  in 
befuddling  so  many  people,  sensible  in  other  matters.  In 
a  simple  commercial  sense,  I  ask,  would  it  pay  to  publish 
catalogues  and  offer  for  sale  combined  middle-age  filth  and 
modern  rascality,  if  there  were  not  buyers  ? 


EPIDEMIC   OF   QUACKERY.  205 

To-day  there  are  in  53  "institutes"  some  8000  pitiable 
victims  of  sin,  forming  four  times  a  day  in  53  lines  ("jab- 
time")  to  receive  from  renegade  medical  graduates  (hired 
servants  of  an  ignorant  charlatan  trading  upon  the  name 
of  medicine)  the  hypodermatic  injection  of  a  secret  sub- 
stance. They  are  guaranteed  a  permanent  cure  of  their 
disease,  and  yet  a  large  proportion  have  gone  through  the 
cure  more  than  once,  and  a  large  proportion  of  those 
never  returning  a  second  time,  relapse.  Despite  the 
medical,  physiologic,  and  literary  barbarism  of  the  Keeley 
pamphlets,  despite  the  indirect  fiendish  cruelties  of  the 
system  (to  friends  of  patients  who  ruin  themselves  to  raise 
the  money — those  who  can't  pay  the  ;^ioo  "may,"  as  at 
least  one  of  the  superintendents  said,  "  go  to  hell !") — 
despite  this  and  the  secrecy,  there  are  men,  otherwise 
sharp-witted  and  intelligent,  who  are  crazy  in  advocacy  of 
this  pernicious  filth.  The  whole  affair  illustrates  well  the 
popular  distrust  in  scientific  medicine,  and  the  popular 
belief  in  a  magical  short-cut  to  health  by  therapeutic  miracle. 
Young  Men's  Christian  Associations,  which  would  not 
think  of  listening  to  a  scientific  lecture  on  the  results  and 
cure  of  chronic  alcoholism,  open  their  doors  to  this  mon- 
strous guller,  and  the  Jay  Gould  of  the  preaching  business, 
from  a  supposedly  Christian  pulpit,  calls  for  God's  bene- 
diction on  the  most  unchristian  of  deviltries.  With  a 
hound's  chorus  of  a  thousand  newspapers,  the  Chicago 
Tribune  leads  in  this  infamous  exploitation  of  the  poor 
drunkard.  So  Perkins's  tractors  sprang  into  popularity,  and 
so,  after  the  speedy  burial  of  this  delusion,  others  will 
periodically  spring  up  in  obedience  to  popular  superstition, 
prodded  and  nursed  by  cunning  Mephistophelianism. 

The  danger  of  medical  lunacy  overtaking  the  people  is 
again  illustrated  by  the  vogue  of  the  creed  of  the  sorry  folk 
termed  metaphysical  or  divine  healers,  Christian  Scientists, 
Faith  or  Mind  Curers.     Would  you  think  it  possible  that 


2o6  EPIDEMIC  OF  QUACKERY. 

people  right  here  in  the  United  States,  among  us  to-day, 
could  believe  that  "  it  is  impossible  that  a  boil  is  inflamed 
or  painful,"  and  that  inflammation,  hemorrhage,  and 
decomposition  are  but  thoughts,  beliefs,*  and  that  carci- 
noma, diphtheria,  typhoid  fever,  what  you  will,  can  be 
cured  by  prayer  or  thinking  hard  at  it?  According  to  Dr. 
Nichols,t  there  are  within  the  limits  of  only  one  of  these 
curious  sects  about  thirty  organized  churches,  and  also  120 
societies  that  maintain  regular  services.  Twenty-three 
institutes,  "  scientific"  and  "  metaphysical,"  are  advertised 
in  one  periodical.  The  number  of  practitioners  "  regularly 
graduated"  reaches  thousands. 

Or,  take  another  national  disgrace,  the  patent-medicine 
shame.  Even  semi-barbarous  countries  have  forbidden 
the  entrance  within  their  limits  of  these  vile  concoctions, 
devised  to  empty  the  pockets  of  the  poor  of  money,  while 
filling  their  bodies  with  poison.  Any  chemical  analyst 
would  tell  you  these  "non-alcoholic  bitters"  are  made  up  of 
from  25  to  50  per  cent,  of  the  vilest  alcohol.  Thousands 
of  poor  babes  have  been  killed  by  soothing  syrups — of 
course,  containing  no  opium  or  other  hypnotic — and  so  on, 
so  on.  to  the  end  of  the  list ! 

What  an  egregious  farce,  that  people  should  buy  a 
cure-all  containing  they  do  not  and  cannot  know  what; 
compounded  they  do  not  know  by  whom — certainly  not,  of 
course,  by  a  physician — vouched  for  by  no  one — an  evident 
bit  of  hoodooism  to  get  money — a  shotgun  prescription 
fired  at  a  disease  in  the  abstract — an  unknown  remedy  for 
an  unknown  disease  from  an  unknown  hand  !  And  yet  the 
millions  upon  millions  of  dollars  invested  in  these  nostrums, 
and  thereby  annually  filched  from  the  ignorance  and  want 
of  the  poorest  and  neediest,  should  arouse  even  the  most 

*  "  Science  of  Health,"  pp.  188,  231. 
t  Science,  January  22,  1892. 


EPIDEMIC   OF   QUACKERY.  2,07 

corrupt  of  legislators  to  put  a  stop  to  it  all.  The  superla- 
tive impudence  of  the  villainous  syndicates  is  degrading  and 
wrecking  the  once  noble  profession  of  pharmacy,  and 
turning  the  disgust  of  the  reader  and  traveler  into  nausea 
by  the  pollution  of  every  newspaper  and  of  every  landscape 
with  sickening  advertisements. 

And  now,  why  do  Keeleyism,  the  patent-medicine  and 
nostrum  sham,  the  homeopathic  disgrace,  and  a  thousand 
such  things  exist  among  us?  They  are,  of  course,  a  vital 
loss  and  a  vital  injury  to  the  community,  working  a  pollu- 
tion of  body  upon  an  idiocy  of  intellect,  by  a  Boss-Tweed- 
ism  of  ethics.  Why  is  our  country  the  refuge  and  asylum 
of  the  survival  superstitions,  the  delirious  nonsense,  and 
diabolical  financial  schemes  that  Europe  has  kicked  out  in 
wrathful  disgust  ?  Simply  this  :  the  newspapers,  journals, 
and  magazines  dare  not  tell  the  truth  or  be  the  means  of 
telling  the  truth.  Every  magazine  or  serial  depends  for 
existence  upon  two  sources  of  revenue :  its  subscribers  and 
its  advertisers.  Let  a  journal  or  paper  publish  an  article 
exposing  the  infamy,  and  "  stop  my  subscription  "  would 
come  from  a  few  dozen  people  whose  pet  fad  is  that  they 
are  being  persecuted,  and  that  they,  who  have  never  stud- 
ied such  things  a  minute,  know  the  truth  about  physiology 
and  disease  that  thousands  of  scientific  men  have  been  de- 
ceived in  finding.  Hence  no  editor  dare  admit  an  article 
showing  up  the  shame  and  wrong  of  these  things.  Physi- 
cians and  other  scientific  men  have  nothing  to  sell,  nothing 
to  advertise ;  but  all  quacks,  nostrum  venders,  and  patent- 
medicine  men  have  something  to  sell,  and  their  advertise- 
ments form  a  tremendous  source  of  revenue  to  every  paper 
in  the  land.  Let  any  journal  reveal  to  its  readers  their 
humbuggery,  and  at  once  it  is  ruined. 

But  advertisements  maligning  and  misrepresenting  their 
opponents  are  put  into  the  reading  columns  as  reading 
notices,  neither  editor  nor  publisher  daring  to  disobey  the 


m8  epidemic  of  quackery. 

orders  of  the  syndicates.  A  well-known  illustration  is  the 
thousand-journal  denunciation  and  contumely,  for  the  past 
year  or  two,  of  the  druggists  who  dare  "  substitute  "  for 
the  quack  medicine  called  for  similar  and  equally  good 
preparations  at  one-half  the  price  of  the  more  advertised 
cure-all. 

Other  examples  of  journalistic  perversity  might  be  cited; 
e.  g.,  Harper's  Magazine  a  year  or  two  ago  published  an 
article  by  a  professional  humorist,  claiming  that  home- 
opathy had  saved  modern  medicine  from  the  medieval  bar- 
barism of  filthy  medication  and  beastly  therapeutics. 
Would  it  insert  an  article  showing  that  the  reverse  is  the 
truth,  and  that  by  the  malicious  and  egregious  blunder  it 
had  grossly  insulted  every  physician  and  scientist,  civiliza- 
tion, and  truth  itself? 

Would  the  newspapers  of  the  country,  headed  by  the 
North  Aniericati  Revie^v,  give  one-hundredth  of  the  free  ad- 
vertising to  a  reputable  or  scientific  institution  for  the  treat- 
ment of  chronic  alcoholism  that  they  have  given  Keeley's 
humbuggery,  and  out  of  which  that  shrewd  advertiser  is 
making  millions  of  dollars? 

The  etiology  and  pathology  of  carcinoma  is  certainly  a 
deep  scientific  question,  and  yet  a  dashing  magazine  editor, 
who  had  never  studied  it  for  a  minute,  indorses  the  cure  of 
a  quack,  Mattei,  who  had  likewise  not  a  scrap  of  medical 
knowledge,  and  the  people  are  thus  gulled  into  spending 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  dollars.  Any  medical  student 
could  have  exposed  the  fallacy,  knowing  how  easily  tumors 
are  diagnosticated  as  carcinomata,  and  thus  often  "  cured." 
Neither  Mr.  Stead  nor  his  Italian  Count  care  for  science. 
They  have  a  short  cut  to  scientific  knowledge  no  physician 
could  have  even  found  out  by  study  or  pathologic  investi- 
gation ! 

A  month  or  two  ago,  a  bill,  "  a  very  moderate  one," 
and  one  that  "  the  three  leading  and  influential  schools  of 


EPIDEMIC  OF  QUACKERY.  209 

medicine  "  had  recommended  to  the  Legislature  of  Ohio, 
to  control  the  practice  of  medicine,  was  shouted  down  in 
guffaws  of  derision  by  the  barbaric  civilized  legislators  of 
that  State  at  the  command  of  the  lobby  controlled  by  the 
so-called  physio-medicals,  the  druggist,  patent-medicine 
men,  and  the  newspapers.  After  this  delectable  piece  of 
diabolism,  this  same  Fejee  Island  Legislature — of  Ohio — 
voted  ;^5000  to  experiment  with  the  Keeley  humbug,  each 
legislator  to  furnish  one  Keeley  patient.  Doubtless  with 
such  men  charity  is  to  begin  at  home,  and  the  patient  will 
not  be  hard  to  find  ! 

Charley  Lamb  said  that  the  only  way  he  could  relieve 
his  feelings  when  he  had  heard  a  Gregorian  chant,  was  to 
lie  down  on  the  floor,  flat  on  his  belly,  and  howl  like  a 
Dervish. 

It  is  useless  and  tiresome  to  multiply  examples.  To  the 
honest  physician  the  diagnosis  is  easy,  but  to  the  physi- 
cian himself  infected  with  the  disease  and  in  the  incubation 
period,  the  disorder  is  unrecognizable.  He  will  contend 
most  vehemently  that  the  patient  is  in  blooming  health. 
All  who  wish  to  know  the  facts  can  easily  learn  them. 
Evidence  of  the  fallacy  of  the  popular  distrust  may  be  seen 
by  the  words  of  one  who  is  certainly  a  competent  and  un- 
prejudiced observer — the  present  highly  honored  president 
of  Harvard  University. 

"It  is  not  more  than  a  hundred  years  ago  that  medicine 
claimed  to  have  been  a  liberal  calling,  an  intellectual  pursuit, 
and  even  to-day  its  position  as  such  is  very  inadequately  recog- 
nized by  the  mass  of  educated  men.  Now,  I  venture  to  say 
that,  as  medical  education  is  now  given  in  the  best  schools,  no 
profession  has  a  better  right  to  claim  the  title  of  an  educated, 
intellectual  calling,  and  no  men  have  a  better  right  to  demand 
recognition  as  intellectual  men,  as  men  of  trained  reasoning 
faculties,  than  the  physicians  themselves.  I  see,  in  my  position 
at  the  head  of  the  University,  which  includes  the  department  of 


aio  EPIDEMIC  OF  QUACKERY. 

liberal  arts  and  several  professional  departments,  that  the  edu- 
cated community  does  not  recognize  this.  And  I  exhort  you, 
gentlemen,  in  all  your  various  fields  of  influence  to  do  your 
atmost  to  establish  this  just  claim  of  the  medical  profession  to 
the  position  of  an  intellectual  calling,  and  to  establish  the  claim 
of  this  great  body  as  a  body  of  highly  trained  men  who  use  to 
the  best  advantage  for  the  community  the  reasoning  faculty,  the 
scientific  power  of  the  human  mind." 

A  quack  is  a  man  more  interested  in  himself  than  in  the 
healing  art ;  caring  more  for  his  patent  than  for  his  patient ; 
more  desirous  of  making  dollars  than  of  curing  disease. 
A  physician  is  one  whose  first  thought  is  to  cure  his  pa- 
tient This  is  the  sharp  dividing  line  that  makes  the  whole 
matter  clear. 

There  are  those  tliat  say  that  medicine  is  a  business, 
that  the  cure  of  diseased  people  and  the  obviation  of  dis- 
ease is  a  calling  like  any  other;  that  the  one  who  cures 
best  will  do  the  best  business — i.  r,  get  the  most  patients. 
There  is  but  one  single  comment  to  make  to  that ;  it  is  a 
lie,  and  the  man  who  says  it  knows  he  is  a  liar.  I  beg  of 
you,  if  you  are  entering  the  medical  profession  with  such 
ideas  in  your  heads  and  such  intentions  in  your  hearts — I 
beg  of  you,  leave  the  profession  to-day.  You  will  be  poor 
physicians,  you  will  die  ashamed  of  yourselves,  you  will 
disgrace  a  noble  calling,  and  you  will  hinder  civilized  pro- 
gress. I  assure  you  this  universe  is  not  put  up  that  way ! 
You  may  make  some  money,  perhaps,  but  the  same  devil- 
try applied  in  politics  or  bucket  shops  will  get  you  much 
more  of  the  stuff  you  seek.  We  have  a  wretched  super- 
abundance of  such  fellows  now  to  watch.  A  large  share 
of  the  energy  of  good  men  is  already  used  up  in  neutraliz- 
ing their  malice  and  thwarting  their  cunning.  You  will  do 
far  better  by  running  for  alderman,  dealing  in  green  goods, 
or  in  anything  except  in  the  health  and  confidence  of 
afflicted  human  beings.    That  is  a  work  fitting  only  to 


EPIDEMIC  OF  QUACKERV.  211 

those  who  recognize  other  ideals  and  purposes  than  selfij.h- 
ness  and  money  getting.  The  acceptance  by  you  of  your 
diplomas  this  day  pledges  and  consecrates  you  to  a  mission 
among  your  fellow-men  that  is  truly  holy.  How  far  you 
are  to  be  above  trade  is  clearly  shown  by  the  fact  that  the 
chemist — as  near  a  physician  as  he  is — can  without  dis- 
honor patent  drugs  and  reap  exclusive  pecuniary  gain  from 
the  learning  and  ingenuity  of  his  brain — but  you  may  not 
do  this.  In  a  close  analysis  the  work  of  the  chemist  and 
scientist  is  due  humanity  as  much  as  is  yours  ;  every  de- 
vice and  improvement  of  civilization  withheld  from  public 
use  or  sold  dearly  is  trading  in  people's  lives,  is  a  sin 
against  the  race — but  only  you,  yours  alone  of  all  the  call- 
ings, must  realize  the  fact  in  every-day  life.  It  is  a  glori- 
ous honor  to  belong  to  the  profession  of  which  that  can 
be  said.  But  the  honor  only  comes  to  them  that  are  will- 
ing to  be  unknown  as  honored,  who  find  the  reward  in 
doing  the  work,  and  in  the  secret  satisfaction  of  a  silent, 
happy,  and  peaceful  conscience. 

But  with  the  professional  honor  and  beatitude  coexists 
the  professional  duty.  There  is  the  greatest  danger  that 
the  men  who  believe  that  medicine  is  a  business  will  have 
their  way,  and  sink  professional  standing  to  the  level  of 
politics  and  trade.  Will  you  join  them  or  will  you  oppose 
them  ?  The  whole  of  your  life  will  be  the  answer,  and  this 
answer  will  largely  consist  in  your  attitude  to  quackery. 
Dr.  H.  C.  Wood  says  that  as  few  or  no  homeopaths  to-day 
believe  or  practice  the  Hahnemannian  clap-trap,  they  have, 
ipso  facto^  suicided,  become  in  a  sectarian  sense  non-ex- 
istent, and  that  on  our  part  we  may  ignore  the  fictitious 
distinction  and  fraternize  with  them.  The  President  of  the 
Philadelphia  County  Medical  Society  advises  letting  them 
into  our  medical  societies.  A  prominent  weekly  medical 
journal  of  New  York  smiles  very  graciously  at  the  sectarian, 
and  a  good  friend  of  mine,  an  editor  of  a  high-standard  med- 


212  EPIDEMIC  OF  QUACKERY. 

ical  journal,  tells  me  that  in  his  city  consultations  with  a 
sectarian  are  very  common,  and  go  unrebuked  by  physi- 
cians otherwise  in  good  standing. 

In  other  words,  after  centuries  of  struggle  and  with  vic- 
tory in  our  hands — throw  it  away  in  a  fit  of  avariciousness, 
cowardice,  and  weariness.  The  gentlemen  quoted  doubtless 
mean  well,  but  the  advice  is  unconsciously  traitorous  to 
humanity  and  to  the  medical  profession.  If  the  advice  be 
followed,  we  shall  fall  back  again  into  what  the  printers  call 
pi,  and  out  of  this  general  debasement  moral  physicians, 
as  individuals,  will  again  have  to  raise  themselves  above 
the  re-commercialized  mass,  and  with  century-long  struggle, 
reform  again  a  new  guild,  with  precisely  the  same  ideals 
and  aims  as  that  we  poltroons  had  destroyed. 

It  cannot  escape  the  observation  of  anyone  who  wishes 
to  see  facts  as  they  are,  that  the  great  mass  of  homeop- 
athists,  by  pure  necessity,  have  in  practice  entirely  aban- 
doned the  whole  crazy  nonsense  of  Hahnemannian  mumbo- 
jumbo,  and  cling  only  to  the  name  for  purely  commercial 
reasons.  The  great  homeopathist,  Guernsey,  he  probably 
who  supplied  "  Dr."  Swan  with  his  sample  or  graft  of  "  ca- 
tarrhus  nasi,"  says  that  there  is  in  New  York  City,  to-day, 
no  exclusive  homeopathic  practitioner.  Any  fool  knows 
that  no  disease  can  be  influenced  or  cured  by  the  medieval 
drivel  of  potentizations,  shakings,  smellings,  similias,  etc. 
But  a  lot  of  silly  women  have  got  it  into  their  heads  that 
this  is  a  "nice"  and  a  "new"  school,  and  these  mounte- 
banks, while  giving  common  drugs  in  physiologic  doses, 
are  willing  to  sail  under  false  colors  for  the  sake  of  the 
practice  it  brings.     It  is  a  sickening  fact,  but  fact  it  is. 

What  is  the  treatment  of  this  veritable  and  terrible  con- 
tagious disease — quackery  ?  How  shall  you  meet  it  ? 
What  are  you  going  to  do  about  it?  Compromise?  The 
suggestion  recalls  Hugo's  famous  monosyllabic  fighter  at 
Waterloo. 


EPIDEMIC  OF  QUACKERY.  213 

Instead  of  the  ninety  thousand  surrendering  to  ten  thou- 
sand, suppose  the  ninety  thousand  learn  a  lesson. 

Combination  is  the  order  of  the  day  in  the  world  of  trade. 
What  is  thus  done  for  selfish  reasons  may  be  done  for  un- 
selfish ones.  The  patent-medicine  men  have  got  every 
druggist  and  every  newspaper  in  America  in  their  deter- 
mined grip.  The  homeopathists  meet  in  National  and  In- 
ternational conventions,  and  devote  their  entire  energies 
and  time  to  schemes  for  getting  State  and  Governmental 
money  and  aid,  and  for  grasping  every  point  of  pecuniary 
and  social  advantage.  In  our  lofty  scorn  of  such  low  cun- 
ning, and  in  our  intense  preoccupation  with  disease  and  its 
cure,  we  never  raise  a  finger  toward  meeting  such  attack, 
never  pass  a  resolution  to  set  Legislatures  right,  never  try 
to  instruct  the  public  in  its  medical  duties  and  self-interest. 
If  as  a  profession  we  did  but  devote  a  tenth  of  our  collect- 
ive energy  and  intellect  to  these  things,  quackery  would 
disappear.  The  medical  profession  is  shut  within  itself 
It  has  no  means  or  machinery  for  reaching  the  public  ear. 
The  few  thousand  quacks  occupy  the  field;  the  public 
hears  from  them  always  and  emphatically. 

Realize  the  condition  of  the  farmer  and  workman,  un- 
educated, undiscriminating.  These  are  the  bulk  of  our 
people.  With  almanacs  and  circulars  and  million-fold  de- 
vices, the  advertisements,  fictitious  certificates,  and  false 
promises  of  the  nostrum-traders  and  the  quacks  reach  his 
mind  and  feed  it  with  subtle  poison  and  plausible  falsehood. 
The  family  physician  is  squeezed  aside,  and  his  testimony 
against  these  frauds,  if  he  have  the  frankness  to  denounce 
them,  is  credited  to  his  jealousy.  The  medical  profession 
has  scorned  to  devise  machinery  to  reach  these  people  and 
to  open  their  eyes  to  the  humbuggery.  By  the  great  mass 
of  the  people  the  medical  profession  is  looked  upon  with 
contempt  or  ill-will,  its  members  to  be  called  in  dire  neces- 
sity, its  bills  paid  grudgingly.     The  bottles  of  the  cure-all 


214  EPIDEMIC   OF   QUACKERY. 

meet  the  physician's  eye  in  every  household.  Every  State 
and  National  medical  congress  or  organization  should  have 
a  literary  bureau,  the  local  physician  as  the  local  agent,  to 
instruct  the  people  in  physiologic,  sanitary,  and  medical 
duties,  and  to  neutralize  the  pernicious  influences  at  work. 
It  should  not  be  held  beneath  our  dignity  to  make  a  popu- 
lar but  honest  and  instructive  medical  almanac  for  popular 
distribution. 

The  American  Medical  Association  and  the  Congress  of 
American  Physicians  and  Surgeons,  every  State  and  every 
medical  society,  should  pronounce  as  bodies  upon  the  great 
questions  affecting  the  health  of  the  public.  Legislators 
think  we  do  not  care,  that  we  have  no  power.  The  quacks 
have  their  ears  and  fill  them.  There  are  a  hundred  great 
public  duties  we  are  leaving  undone  when,  if  we  but  spoke 
as  a  profession,  medical  and  sanitary  progress  would  sweep 
on  to  certain  victory.  It  is,  let  us  hope,  only  a  question 
of  time.  In  the  riot  and  intoxication  of  the  rich  conquest 
of  American  advantage.  Democracy  thinks  that  every  out- 
rageous form  of  delusional  crankery  must  have  its  swing 
and  chance  to  rule  or  ruin.  But  that  day  is  fast  passing 
away.  We  must  now  settle  down  to  the  hard  work  of 
governing  and  civilizing.  When  the  Prince  Hal  of  Democ- 
racy becomes  the  King  of  Civilization  he  must  henceforth 
scorn  the  Falstaffs  of  quackery  and  scatterbrained  tomfool- 
ery. So  in  your  case  when  the  Student  Hal  becomes  the 
Practitioner  King  beware  that  you  be  not  tempted  to  think 
that  the  aim  of  your  life,  professional  success,  will  come 
more  quickly  by  compromise  with  quackery  and  trickery 
methods.  There  is  no  doubt  of  the  fact :  if  you  are  after 
quick  success  you  will  find  it  that  way.  But  this  plan 
has  three  disadvantages':  you  will  not  find  enduring 
success,  you  will  not  be  self-satisfied  and  morally  strong, 
and  you  will  not  gain  the  love  and  honor  of  your  fellow- 
men. 


EPIDEMIC   OF   QUACKERY.  215 

To  be  explicit  and  detailed,  let  me  counsel  a  few 
"  don'ts :  "— 

1.  Don't  be  in  a  hurry  for  success. 

2.  Don't  consult  or  fraternize  with  quacks  of  any  kind 
or  degree. 

3.  Don't  be  afraid  of  speaking  out  your  denunciation  of 
quackery,  regardless  of  the  loss  of  a  few  possible  patients 
and  the  charge  of  jealousy. 

4.  Don't  support  medical  journals  run  in  the  interests 
of  the  advertisers,  journals  that  are  muzzled,  that  are  con- 
ciliatory to  or  nondenunciatory  of  quackery. 

5.  Don't  sign  a  single  certificate  so  long  as  you  live,  as 
regards  special,  proprietary,  or  secret  preparations. 

6.  Don't  write  a  medical  article  in  which  such  prepara- 
tions are  praised  or  even  mentioned. 

7.  Don't  accept  commissions  or  presents  from  druggists, 
manufacturers,  opticians,  or  surgical-instrument  dealers. 

8.  Don't  let  any  professional  allusion  to  yourself,  your 
opinions,  or  your  work  get  into  the  lay  newspapers.  Don't 
be  a  sneak  advertiser,  a  "  newspaper  doctor." 

9.  In  your  own  righteous  wrath  against  quacks  outside 
of  the  profession,  don't  forget  that  there  are  many  within 
the  profession,  and  that  they  are  the  most  despicable — true 
wolves  in  sheep's  clothing.  I  would  rather  be  the 
"  Wizard  King  of  Pain,"  and  buy  affidavits  of  impossible 
cures  at  twenty  dollars  each,  than  a  respectable  hypocrite 
indirectly  or  secretly  hobnobbing  with  newspaper  reporters 
and  supplying  them  with  "  data." 

As  physicians  charged  with  the  health  of  the  present 
and  future,  our  duty  must  become  clear:  the  entire  witch's 
Sabbath  of  'pathies  and  'isms,  the  morbid  cranks,  drunk 
with  ignorance  and  conceit ;  the  sly  cunning  of  advertis- 
ing schemers,  the  tricks  and  frauds  of  medical  parasites  to 
suck  the  blood  of  their  dupes,  the  patent  medicine  disgrace 
— all  these  things  must  be  choked  out  of  existence.      It  is 


2i6  EPIDEMIC  OF  QUACKERY. 

a  warfare,  not  a  compromise,  we  are  entering  upon.  It 
is  not  a  theory,  it  is  a  condition  that  confronts  us. 

Another  need  is  for  individual  instruction  of  people. 
People  are  wofully  ignorant,  medically,  and  we  have  been 
shuffling  and  cowardly.  When  a  nice  little  foolish  woman 
or  a  pig-headed  man  with  arched  eyebrows  and  self-satis- 
faction tells  me,  "  Oh,  I  belong  to  the  new  school,"  I  at 
once  say,  Ach,  so ! — the  very  school  I  belong  to — but,  we 
differ  as  to  what  the  new  school  really  is.  Excuse  me,  do 
you  have  the  itch  ?  Do  you  believe  that  your  eau-de-Co- 
logne gets  stronger  by  shaking  it,  and  that  if  you  shake  it 
in  a  peculiar  manner  too  many  times  it  will  get  stronger  than 
aqua  fortis  ?  Do  you  believe  your  ink  will  get  blacker,  or 
your  whiskey  stronger  the  more  water  you  put  in  it?  Do 
"  ink-grafts  "  and  Cologne  " grafts  "  work?  Do  you  believe 
in  watching  the  way  the  toe-nails  grow  for  a  year  after 
taking  a  bit  of  vegetable  carbon — toasted  bread — as  symp- 
toms of  disease  and  evidences  of  drug-power?  Do  you 
believe  the  only  safe  way  of  taking  medicine  is  by  smell- 
ing it?  Did  you,  as  a  boy,  find  that  stomach-ache  from 
eating  green  apples  was  cured  by  eating  green  currants? 
If  you  don't  believe  any  of  these  things,  you  are  a  sensible 
person,  not  a  Hahnemannian.  These  and  such  things  are 
the  only  things  that  can  be  called  Hahnemannian.  If  you 
don't  believe  them,  do  you  think  it  honest  or  manly  to  pre- 
tend to  believe  them  for  the  sake  of  a  few  dollars,  and 
sneakingly,  hypocritically  practice  medicine  much  the 
same  as  physicians  do,  giving  common  drugs  in  physio- 
logic doses? 

I  have  been  surprised  to  see  how  a  few  minutes'  talk 
with  such  people  makes  it  plain  to  them  what  silly  fools 
they  have  been,  and  how  egregiously  they  have  been 
duped.  I  have  looked  about  for  some  scrap  of  literature 
I  could  hand  to  these  folks,  to  show  them  what  roaring 
nonsense  they  unwittingly  gave  their  assent  to.     Oliver 


EPIDEMIC   OF   QUACKERY.  217 

WendelJ  Holmes's  little  skit  is  almost  the  only  such  thing. 
Convinced,  however,  that  people  need  and  will  profit  by 
simple  instruction  honestly, plainly,  justly  put  before  them, 
I  wish  to  have  a  little  pamphlet  prepared  that,  historically 
and  actually,  will  show  up  the  ridiculous  pretensions  of 
modern  homeopathic  practice.  I  shall,  therefore,  postpone 
a  bit  of  private  pleasure  I  had  planned,  and  offer  a  little 
prize  of  ;^  100.00  for  the  best  essay  on  the  subject.* 

Such  a  monograph  supplied  as  a  missionary  tract  for 
gratuitous  distribution  by  physicians,  at  the  cost  of  print- 
ing, would  set  thousands  of  people  straight,  and  would 
soon  stop  the  legislative  and  financial  Governmental  sup- 
port of  this  trumpery.  I  wish  some  millionaire  would 
give  me  a  few  hundred  dollars  to  offer  as  prizes  for  other 
missionary  tracts,  e.  g.,  on  the  "  Patent-Medicine  Evil ;  " 
"  The  Reasons  Physicians  Do  Not  Advertise ;  "  "  Why 
Physicians  Do  Not  Patent  Instruments,  Drugs,  Etc. ; " 
"  The  Duty  of  the  Government  and  State  to  Medicine  ;  " 
"  Everbody's  Medical  Duty ;  "  "  The  Desirability  of  a 
Higher  Standard  of  Medical  Education,"  etc.  What  a 
disgrace  that  we  cannot  get  Governmental  aid  for  payment 
of  meat  and  milk  inspectors,  boards  of  health,  bacterio- 
logic  and  hygienic  institutes,  etc.,  etc.,  whilst  the  people's 
money  can  be  filched  from  them  to  support  arrant  quackery. 
What  a  disgrace  that  patent-medicine  syndicates  can  draw 
many  millions  every  year  from  the  diseased,  deluded,  and 
poverty-stricken  of  our  people,  with  a  Governmental  tax 

*An  essay  should  not  contain  over  15,000  words,  and  in  simplicity  and 
directness  should  be  adapted  to  the  commonest  lay  understanding.  Papers 
should  be  sent  me  on  or  before  January  I,  1893,  type-wriiten,  without  the 
name  of  the  author,  but  accompanied  by  a  sealed  letter,  giving  the  author's 
name  with  motto  or  nom-de-plume.  The  essays  will  be  given  to  a  competent 
committee,  and  when  their  decision  is  reached  the  sealed  letters  of  the  authors 
will  be  opened,  and  the  prize  sent  the  winner.  The  essay  will  then  be 
cheaply  but  well  printed  in  large  quantities,  and  supplied  physicians  at  the 
cost  of  printing. 

»9 


2i8  EPIDEMIC  OF  QUACKERY. 

of  only  25  per  cent,  upon  their  mixtures,  whilst  the  same 
people  must  pay  a  tax  of  60  per  cent,  upon  microscopes, 
and  one  of  49^  cents  a  pound  and  60  per  cent,  besides 
upon  woolen  clothing. 

The  physicians  of  the  civilized  world  are  to  day  working 
for  the  public  welfare  with  a  zeal  and  intelligence,  combined 
with  an  unselfishness,  that  no  other  profession,  trade,  or 
calling  can  faintly  rival.  Think,  first,  that  these  men  are 
almost  furiously  seeking  by  hygiene  and  prophylaxis  to 
render  their  own  calling  useless  and  superfluous,  themselves 
occupationless.  That  is  a  fact  so  .strange  as  almost  to  seem 
unnatural  in  these  days  of  self-seeking,  class-legislation, 
trusts,  and  combines. 

Notice,  again,  that  every  instrument,  discovery,  drug,  or 
invention  brought  out  that  will  do  any  good  to  humanity 
is  at  once  and  unreservedly  given  to  the  world.  No  phy- 
sician ever  patents  or  keeps  secret  any  discovery  or  inven- 
tion.    Compare  that  with  the  world's  way. 

Reflect,  thirdly,  that  all  the  world  over  every  physician, 
whenever  asked,  gives  his  services  to  the  poor  without 
demand  or  without  hope  of  compensation.  Would  not  a 
lawyer  or  a  locksmith  think  one  crazy  if  it  were  proposed 
that  he  should  give  a  large  share  of  his  time  and  service 
for  nothing  ? 

Carry  the  thought  on.  The  entire  tremendous  labor, /or 
the  benefit  of  the  community,  of  keeping  up  the  enormous 
hospital  work  of  all  the  world's  cities  is  borne  by  physi- 
.cians  without  a  cent  of  pay.  Are  there,  for  example, 
thousands  of  similar  institutions  where  the  poor,  free  of 
charge,  can  get  legal  counsel  and  help  ?  Is  there  one 
such  ? 

It  has  been  the  universal  medical  tradition,  accepted 
without  a  murmur,  that  whosoever  devotes  himself  to  the 
healing  art  must  gladly  construe  his  duty  in  this  unselfish 
manner,   renouncing   the    usual    ideals    and    commercial 


EPIDEMIC  OF  QUACKERY.  ai9 

methods  of  the  surrounding  world.  Beyond  all  question 
it  is  a  fact  that  a  like  grade  of  intellectual  capacity,  the 
same  educational  preparation,  and  an  equal  amount  of  tire- 
less labor  in  any  other  calling  would  yield  a  far  greater 
financial  result  than  is  secured  by  the  average  physician. 
A  great  physician  said,  "  If  my  son  goes  into  the  medical 
profession,  I  shall  cut  him  off  with  a  shilling."  "  Why 
so  ?  "  "  Because  the  profession  is  not  appreciated  by  the 
public." 

It  is  a  public  misfortune,  a  social  evil,  if  there  is  slowly, 
subtly,  but  most  certainly,  creeping  through  the  profession 
the  lethal  poison  of  a  lowered  ethical  standard.  Every 
person  of  the  land  has  a  selfish  interest  in  preventing  our 
adoption  of  the  more  selfish  aims  and  ideals  of  the  world 
of  trade.  Business  men  are  very  short-sighted  if  they  allow 
or  encourage  medicine  to  become  a  business.  Whenever 
this  change  shall  have  come  about  (if,  alas !  it  should),  and 
medical  success  is  sought  by  the  prevalent  rules  of  trade, 
then  the  degradation  will  be  irreparable,  one  of  the  noblest 
of  offices  will  have  become  as  corrupted  and  salable  as 
those  of  politics,  and  an  engine  of  incalculable  good  to 
humanity  will  have  been  hopelessly  wrecked. 

Could  one  but  reach  their  ears,  how  one  would  like  to 
appeal  to  the  general  public,  to  legislators  of  a  serious- 
minded  type,  if  such  there  be,  to  the  better  class  of  inde- 
pendent journals,  to  the  more  thoughtful  of  literary  men, 
to  the  rulers  and  teachers  in  colleges  and  universities,  to 
careful  and  prudent  business  men  even,  to  patriots  and^ 
lovers  of  humanity,  all.  This  malicious  and  stupid  miscon- 
ception ;  this  non-recognition  of,  and  opposition  to,  the 
true  work  and  worth  of  modern  scientific  medicine ;  this 
hectoring  and  bullying  of  physicians  in  all  their  aims  for 
the  public  good ;  this  cordial  support  of  all  legislative  and 
sordid  schemes  of  cranks  and  quacks- — is  a  social  menace 
and  a  common  danger.     It  is  long  past  the  time  that  this 


220  EPIDEMIC  OF   QUACKERY. 

suicidal  debauchery  should  have  been  stopped.  To  all 
good  citizens  it  should  be  protested  :  This  is  your  affair, 
not  ours.  It  is  as  much  a  national  sin  as  slavery,  monopoly 
or  class-legislation,  vote-buying,  the  liquor-corruption,  or 
city-luxury — more  than  a  sin,  it  is  a  moral  disease  of  the 
body  politic,  and  such  disease  is  an  expensive  luxury.  It 
costs  untold  money,  suffering,  and  human  lives.  Every 
physician  knows  of  many  deaths  directly  due  to  quackery, 
but  the  indirect  deaths  and  consequences  are  incalculable. 
Quackery  kills  thousands  to  hydrophobia's  one.  The 
silent  scourges  are  the  great  ones — those  that  cut  off  single 
lives  slowly  but  ceaselessly.  It  becomes  for  you  every  day 
more  and  more  a  question  of  self-protection  and  self-interest. 
It  is  not,  as  you  seem  to  think,  a  huge  joke,  but  it  is  your 
health,  your  life,  your  future,  that  you  are  trifling  with. 
Every  epidemic  of  any  contagious  disease,  to  put  it  in  the 
crudest  way,  means  the  waste  of  millions  of  dollars  of  lost 
time,  of  expensive  sickness,  and  of  grievous  death.  In 
these  United  States  hundreds  of  thousands  of  needless 
deaths  are  annually  taking  place — needless,  because  you 
will  reach  no  helping  hand  to  physicians  to  carry  out 
the  preventive  measures,  discovered  and  well  known  to  us. 
In  these  same  States,  still  other  millions  of  years  of  sick- 
ness and  millions  of  deaths  are  going  to  occur  during  the 
next  few  years,  again  because  you  will  not  aid  the  medical 
profession  to  search  out  other  at  present  unknown  sources 
of  disease.  There  are  plenty  of  possible  Kochs  and  Pas- 
^teurs  among  American  young  men,  if  you  cared,  as  they 
do  abroad,  to  help  find  them  instead  of  laughing  at  them, 
killing  them  with  indignity  and  distrust,  whilst  feasting  and 
honoring  your  beloved  charlatans.  Are  your  charlatans 
founding  institutes  of  bacteriology  and  preventive  medicine  ? 
Are  they  trying  to  probe  the  mystery  and  prevent  the 
mockery  of  disease  ?  Has  it  been  the  quacks  that  have 
builded  the  noble  new  home  of  which  city  and  profession 


EPIDEMIC  OF  QUACKERY.  221 

are  proud,  for  the  trinity  of  great  schools  of  Medicine, 
Pharmacy,  and  Dentistry,  of  your  beloved  Buffalo  Univer- 
sity ?  Are  you  wise  as  a  nation,  if,  like  the  old  persecu- 
tors, you  martyrize  those  who  are  your  truest,  most  service- 
able friends  ?  For  the  sake  of  the  simplest  selfishness,  for 
the  love  of  your  children,  for  the  sake  of  civilization  and 
humanity,  for  God's  sake,  let  us  turn  away  from  the  folly 
and  sin  of  this  trifling,  and  enter  at  last  upon  the  ways  that 

lead  to  HEALTH  ! 


THE    UNTRUSTWORTHINESS   OF  THE   LAY 
PRESS  IN  MEDICAL  MATTERS.* 

Unless  the  writing  be  a  verbatim  quotation  from  a 
medical  journal  it  is  quite  impossible  for  an  educated 
physician  to  finish  the  reading  of  an  article  on  a  medical 
subject  in  a  nonmedical  journal  without  a  smile  either  of 
contempt,  of  amusement,  or  of  both  combined.  A  strange 
fatality  seems  to  attend  the  filtration  of  medical  facts 
through  the  lay  editorial  and  reportorial  mind.  Not  long 
since,  the  editor  of  one  of  the  most  popular  and  respectable 
magazines,  with  puzzling  injudiciousness,  allowed  a  profes- 
sional humorist  the  use  of  his  columns  to  prove  that  the 
quintessential  nonsense  and  mummeries  of  medieval 
therapeutics  had  been  extinguished  solely  by  the  power  of 
so-called  homeopathic  rationalism  and  science.  By  reason 
of  this  exquisite  illogicality  the  humor  of  the  sketch  to 
discriminating  minds  was  greatly  but  unconsciously  height- 
ened. In  a  recent  number  of  one  of  the  best  of  English 
magazines,  an  author  and  the  editor  evidently  thought 
that  they  were  firing  at  the  slow-going  medical  profes- 
sion a  discovery  of  vast  importance  as  to  the  resuscitation 
of  asphyxiated  persons.  What  was  new  in  the  discovery 
was  not  true,  and  what  was  true  was  by  no  means  new. 
Had  we  space  we  could  adduce  from  recent  journals  of 
otherwise  good  reporting-ability  a  score  of  examples  of 
most  egregious  and  not  infrequently  amusing  misrepresen- 
tation.    We  complain,  so  far,  of  no  intentional  misinforma- 

*  From  the  Medical  News,  November  21,  1 89 1. 
222 


THE    LAY   PRESS.  223 

tion,  but  wish  only  to  emphasize  the  fact  that  with  the  best 
ability  and  intention  the  result  is  ludicrously  inaccurate  and 
the  mind  of  the  ordinary  reader  is  filled  with  half-truths 
and  untruths  that  perpetuate  the  proverbial  and  frightfully 
inaccurate  jumble  of  opinions  as  to  medicine  held  by  the 
ordinary  individual. 

If  we  descend  from  the  better  class  of  carefully  edited 
serials  to  the  preposterous  Sunday  newspaper  and  the  out- 
rageous advertising  sheets  supplied  Master  Demos,  we  are 
at  once  confronted  with  a  farrago  of  unmedical  travesties 
of  medical  knowledge  quite. beyond  adequate  description 
and  worthy  vilification.  Here  begins  an  ignorance  that  is 
far  more  than  culpable  and  a  misrepresentation  that  is  at 
once  venal  and  shameless. 

Even  in  many  of  the  best  papers  the  power  of  the  patent- 
medicine  man,  the  World's  Therapeutic  Institute,  and  the 
advertising  agent  is  supreme.  The  profitable  advertise- 
ment closes  the  editorial  mouth  or  opens  it  with  a  prompt- 
ness that  is  comparable  only  to  that  of  a  rigid  mechanism 
responding  to  a  preordained  stimulus.  The  most  striking 
exemplification  of  this  has  lately  occurred.  From  one 
boundary  of  the  United  States  to  all  the  others  almost 
every  newspaper  of  this  broad  democratic  land  has  been 
repeating  as  news  and  howling  as  editorial  judgment  the 
echoings  of  a  certain  hired  advertiser's  agent  of  the  patent- 
medicine  fraternity,  denouncing  and  abusing  the  poor  drug- 
gist who  should  dare  to  offer  his  customer  any  preparation 
other  than  the  "  patented "  cure-all  the  poor  over-adver- 
tised dupe  of  a  customer  had  asked  for.  The  "  substitution 
evil "  has  been  cursed  and  spat  upon  with  all  the  wrath  of 
all  the  money  of  all  the  patent-medicine  syndicates  of  all 
the  Americas.  What  are  the  facts?  A  set  of  sharpers 
compound  some  secret  mixture,  good  or  bad,  of  drugs  and 
syrups,  and,  relying  upon  the  gullibility  of  people,  in  order 
to    reap   millions,    they   purchase  the  press  with  an  odd 


S34  THE   LAY    PRESS. 

hundred  thousand  dollars'  worth  of  advertisements.  The 
booby  dupe  calls  at  the  drug  store  for  the  cure-all.  The 
druggist  cannot  make  a  cent  on  the  patented  and  adver- 
tised article,  so  completely  has  the  advertiser  got  him  in 
his  grip.  But  the  druggist  knows  the  ingredients  of  the 
mixture,  and  knows  the  advertised  article  is  sold  at  an 
enormous  profit  to  the  advertiser.  He  is  equal  to  the 
emergency  and  mixes  his  own  unpatented  medicine,  truth- 
fully guaranteeing  it  in  every  way  as  good  as  that  of  the 
patentee,  and  with  a  fair  profit  to  himself  he  can  sell  it  at 
half  the  price  of  the  advertised  and  patented  article.  In 
a  commercial  sense  he  is  doing  perfectly  right,  and  every- 
body but  the  owner  of  the  secret  article  must  wish  the 
druggist  well  in  his  hard  lot  in  thus  fighting  fire  with  fire. 
But  in  hounding  the  druggist  as  a  scoundrel  the  general 
press  has  shown  most  superbly  how  its  opinions  in  medical 
matters  are  anything  but  useful  to  the  community.  Could 
a  single  one  of  these  guardians  of  public  morality  be  counted 
on  to  help  tell  the  world  what  a  disgrace  to  civilization  the 
entire  vile  patent-medicine  business  is  ? 

The  query  arises  as  to  the  possibility  of  setting  this 
right, — of  the  possibility  of  so  stating  medical  truths  that 
the  common  intelligence  may  be  able  to  understand  them, 
and  of  the  duty  and  responsibility  of  medical  men  in  thus 
molding  and  clarifying  the  lay  mind  about  these  things. 
Other  departments  of  science  have  their  plebificators,  their 
professional  popularizers  of  knowledge,  and  in  every  other 
sphere  attractive  handbooks  and  simple  expository  treat- 
ises are  continually  multiplied,  which,  without  distortion 
and  mystification,  put  even  the  most  unlettered  au  cottrant 
with  the  latest  discoveries  and  the  most  abstract  of  scien- 
tific truths.  Why  is  it  that  that  which  pertains  most  vitally 
to  the  welfare  of  each  and  every  person  is  left  untouched 
and  the  unprofessional  mind  allowed  to  grope  in  a  gloomy 
twilight  of  fancy,  prejudice,  and  ignorance?     The  continu- 


THE   LAY   PRESS.  325 

ance  of  this  condition  of  the  lay  mind  is  the  essential  and 
almost  sole  reason  that  quackery,  medical  superstition,  and 
medical  sectarianism  are  of  such  prolific  growth.  Ignorance 
and  misinformation  are  the  manures  of  these  sad  weeds. 

Among  many  there  are  three  principal  methods  whereby 
the  profession  may  counteract  the  malicious  influences  at 
work : — 

1.  A  persistent  endeavor  on  the  part  of  each  of  us  to  have 
modern  and  scientific  physiology  made  a  more  prominent 
part  of  the  teaching  in  all  schools  and  colleges.  Wherever 
we  can,  we  should  try  to  influence  school  boards,  educa- 
tors, teachers,  and  trustees  of  educational  institutions,  both 
primary  and  higher,  to  make  anatomic,  physiologic,  and 
hygienic  courses  of  study  a  necessary  part  of  the  curricula. 

2.  Medical  men  should  write  for  the  newspapers,  and 
should  compile  elementary  manuals  that  may  popularize 
medical  knowledge  without  mutilating  and  rendering  it 
absurd  or  erroneous.  We  are  well  aware  of  the  fearful 
danger  lurking  in  this  advice :  the  license  thereby  given 
the  schemer  to  advertise  his  professional  ability  and  serv- 
ice,— a  danger  that  in  the  present  state  of  professional 
greed  and  public  indiscrimination  cannot  be  too  sharply 
emphasized  and  prophesied.  But  it  is  not  an  inobviable 
danger,  and  its  checks  and  preventions  will,  with  growing 
intelligence  and  morality,  be  speedily  found. 

3.  The  noble  and  marvelously  effective  new  method  of 
general  education,  known  as  the  University  Extension 
system,  should  be  seized  upon  and  made  use  of  by  the 
medical  profession  to  extend  in  the  minds  of  all  a  correct 
knowledge  of  the  body  and  its  diseases.  The  instrument 
seems  as  if  made  to  our  hand.  Professors  in  medical  col- 
leges, teachers  of  physiology,  hygienists,  even  the  humblest 
physicians,  have  inexhaustible  stores  of  correct  observation 
and  knowledge  for  which  humanity  is  waiting  and  asking, 
and  which  to  it  would  be  of  inestimable  value. 


THE   DISORGANIZATION   OF   MEDICAL 

SCIENCE.* 

One  of  America's  well-known  scientists,  in  charge  of  an 
ethnologic  exhibit  at  the  Columbian  Exposition,  was  asked 
if  there  were  no  distinctive  medical  exhibit  showing  the 
progress  of  medical  science  and  art.  "  Progress  of  Medi- 
cine !"  said  he,  contemptuously.  "  There  is  no  such  a  thing  !" 
From  further  conversation  it  was  clear  that,  in  the  opinion 
of  the  gentleman,  by  the  term  medical  science  is  only  to 
be  understood  the  curing  of  a  sick  person  in  its  most  re- 
strictive sense.  It  may  be  asserted,  moreover,  that  this 
limited  definition  is  that  tacitly  agreed  upon  by  the  general 
scientific  mind  of  the  day.  It  is  becoming  more  evident 
that  hygiene,  with  its  hundreds  of  subordinate  departments, 
and  its  thousands  of  meeting-points  with  human  life,  is  be- 
coming autonomic,  so  far  as  medicine  is  concerned,  and 
that  soon  hygiene  and  medicine  will  not  only  be  possibly 
distinct  callings,  but  that  they  will  necessarily  be  distinct. 
Bacteriology  is  also  tending  toward  a  similar  autonomy. 
In  a  word,  to  generalize  the  two  aspects,  we  may  say  that 
preventive  medicine  and  curative  medicine  are  slowly  drift- 
ing apart,  each  segregating  into  distinct  fields  of  study  and 
activity,  to  be  pursued  less  and  less  by  the  same  individ- 
ual. Even  the  medical  profession  is  in  various  ways  as- 
senting to  the  breach.  It  is  not  uncommon  to  hear  some 
half  contemptuous  remark  about  the  "  laboratory  doctor," 
the  "  bug-man,"  or  the  "sewer-physician." 


*  From  The  Medical  News  of  July  29,  1893. 
226 


DISORGANIZATION  OF   MEDICINE.  337 

But  it  remains  an  infinitely  serious  question  whether 
this  is  a  wise  movement  or  not.  It  may  even  be  held  one 
of  the  most  important  things  the  profession  has  to  ponder 
and  decide  about  during  the  next  generation.  Its  signifi- 
cance is  manifest  in  the  fact  that  with  the  progress  in  civil- 
ization cure  must  more  and  more  yield  place  to  prevention, 
so  that  as  all  wise  minds  seek  to  forefend  coming  ill,  the 
function  of  the  therapeutist  as  such  must  be  one  of  pro- 
gressively lessening  influence,  whilst  that  of  the  preventer 
must  be  one  of  continuously  enlarging  influence.  If  the 
treatment  of  smallpox  a  century  ago  had  been  the  sole 
duty  of  the  physician,  he  would  now  find  himself  out  of 
work.  Thus  as  one  after  another  we  learn  the  preventions 
of  diseases,  the  role  of  the  therapeutist  becomes  more  and 
more  sharply  restricted  with  each  new  discovery. 

It  may  be  said  that  it  matters  not  by  whom  or  by  what 
class  of  men  the  work  is  done,  so  that  the  work  is  in  truth 
done,  well  done,  and  so  that  society  receives  the  protection. 
In  answer,  it  should  be  remembered  that  there  is  a  doubt 
in  the  minds  of  many  if  the  tendency  toward  differentia- 
tion of  function  in  our  work  of  life  is  not  already  excessive. 
Some  specialism  there  must  be,  even  much,  but  so  far  as 
medicine  goes  it  is  agreed  that  all  specialists  must  first  have 
a  thorough  grounding  in  general  medicine,  and  that  they 
must  well  understand  the  physiologic  and  pathologic  rela- 
tions of  the  special  organs  and  objects  of  their  own  study  with 
those  of  other  specialists.  Moreover,  prevention  is  never  ab- 
solute, and  no  disease  is,  so  far  as  we  can  judge,  ever  wholly 
stamped  out.  Hence  the  curers  will  always  have  office, 
and  work  to  do.  Prevention,  too,  not  seldom  runs,  or  may 
run,  into  pathogenesis,  and  the  sanitarian  or  bacteriologist 
must  be  on  the  alert  to  see  that  prophylaxis  shall  not  in- 
directly become  the  origin  of  disease.  He  must  be  a 
physician  to  keep  from  being  a  disease-producer. 

A  multitude  of  weighty  reasons  at  once  arise  in  the  mind, 


228  DISORGANIZATION   OF   MEDICINE. 

all  going  to  show  that  if  the  two  departments  of  curative 
and  preventive  medicine  become  separated,  each  officered 
and  manned  by  men  knowing  little  or  nothing  of  the  work, 
methods,  and  ideals  of  the  other,  it  will  be  the  worse  for 
that  society  for  whose  welfare  we  labor.  The  consequent 
narrowing  of  the  physician's  sphere  of  labor  and  usefulness 
will  serve  to  further  emphasize  the  contempt  with  which 
the  populace  already  looks  upon  the  doctor-world.  Medi- 
cal sectarianism  will  be  immensely  increased  by  it,  and 
heaven  knows  that  few  greater  misfortunes  could  happen 
than  greater  popular  ignorance  as  to  the  value  to  the 
world  of  an  enlightened  and  powerful  medical  profession, 
and  of  the  disgrace  of  medical  sectarianism. 

Those,  therefore,  who  shape  our  legislation  and  mold 
popular  sentiment  should,  we  think,  struggle  against  the 
disorganizing  tendencies  of  our  science.  The  work  of 
preventing  and  of  healing  disease  is  essentially  one  work, 
and  the  further  apart  they  drift  the  poorer  will  the  work 
be  done,  the  worse  for  society,  and  certainly  the  worse  for 
that  part  that  is  content  to  become,  in  the  ever-narrowing 
sense  of  the  word,  medical.  It  should  never  be  forgotten 
that  Jenner,  Koch,  and  Lister  were  physicians.  It  will  be 
a  profound  professional  misfortune  if  future  discoveries 
and  progress  in  preventive  medicine  shall  be  made  by  non- 
medical men.  Then  will  the  future  scientist  ask,  with  all 
the  more  reason  and  justified  scorn,  "  What  progress,  pray, 
is  there  to  chronicle  in  medicine  ?  "  The  genuine  progress 
in  medicine  consists,  indeed,  in  making  medicine  and 
therapeutics  unnecessary.  Those  who  have  true  pride  in 
their  profession  will  not  willingly  give  up  the  work  that 
rightfully,  and  by  inheritance,  has  fallen  to  them,  but 
while  prompt  to  relieve  the  present  evil  and  lessen  bad 
results,  they  will  also  seek  to  prevent  the  coming  evil,  and 
to  neutralize  the  causes  whence  flow  the  bad  results. 
Sanitary    science,    bacteriology,   and    all    those    biologic 


DISORGANIZATION  OF  MEDICINE.  229 

studies  that  go  to  make  up  preventive  medical  science  must, 
therefore,  be  integral  parts  of  the  curricula  of  every  true 
medical  school ;  the  teachers  of  these  branches  should  be 
physicians ;  the  boards,  National,  State,  or  City,  of  public 
health,  quarantine,  etc.,  should  at  least  have  medical  repre- 
sentatives, if  not  be  entirely  made  up  and  governed  by 
medical  men.  Throughout  the  land  every  physician  should 
actively  interest  himself  in  whatever  pertains  to  the  health 
of  the  community,  thus  showing  by  word  and  deed  that  it 
is  our  proper  function  to  prevent  as  well  as  to  heal  disease, 
and  that  the  two  things  must  be  done  by  one  person,  and 
by  one  profession. 


CONCERNING  SPECIALISM* 

We  have  lately  been  treated  in  numerous  articles  to 
criticisms  of  specialism  in  medicine,  varying  from  placid 
censure  of  its  most  obtrusive  extremes  to  violent  denuncia- 
tion of  the  very  fact  itself  and  of  all  its  important  illustrators. 
At  first  we  were  inclined  to  sing  in  chorus.  The  recent 
hypertrophy  of  specialism,  the  outrageous  extremes  to 
which  certain  exponents  have  driven  it,  especially  in 
America,  with  our  orifacialists,  graduated  tenotomists, 
female  castrationists,  ossicle-excisionists,  and  all  the  rest, 
have  always  loomed  big  before  our  eyes.  Assent  would 
therefore  be  an  easy  task,  especially  when  the  impertinent 
exaggeration  of  morbid  extremists  seems  to  delight  in 
thrusting  itself  upon  the  attention,  and  insulting  all  sense 
of  self-control  with  examples  of  manifest  evil.  It  may, 
however,  very  properly  be  asked  if  there  is  no  good  to  be 
extracted  even  out  of  things  most  woful.  All  evil  has  its 
uses — at  least  for  purposes  of  warning. 

The  first  and  most  obvious  answer  to  the  critics — we 
mean  the  critics  sans  phrase,  the  delendo  est  Carthago  fellows 
— of  specialism,  is  that  the  contempt  poured  upon  the 
greatest  extremists  does  not  apply  to  the  vast  majority  of 
specialists.  It  is  unjust  to  single  out  the  maniacal  hobby- 
riders  and  sneer  ex  uno  disce  omnes.  All  are  not  alike. 
The  hobby-riders  are  few  and  exceptional  \  the  preponderant 
majority  do  not  deserve  the  strictures  and  are  not  affected 
by  them.  It  is  sheer  nonsense  to  say  that  the  great  body 
of  specialists  know  nothing  of  general    diseases,  that  "  a 

*  From  the  Medical  News  of  September  28,  1895. 
230 


CONCERNING  SPECIALISM.  231 

man  who  looks  only  into  the  ear  cannot  see  far  into  the 
nose,"  that  "they  who  view  female  life  through  the  vagina 
will  have  little  respect  for  the  stomach,"  that  the  surgeon 
will  cut  rather  than  cure,  and  that  for  stricture  of  the  rectum 
the  oculist  will  apply  glasses  or  snip  eye-tendons.  The 
people  who  say  such  things  are  cantankerous,  and  try  to 
say  sharp  things  instead  of  true  things.  Argument  by 
epigram  may  be  amusing,  but,  like  government  by  epigram, 
it  ends  nowhere  or  worse  than  nowhere.  The  makers  of 
mots  never  say  the  truth,  only  the  error  they  impale. 
Their  desire  is  not  to  instruct  or  to  be  honest,  but  to  make 
people  say,  "How  smart !"  But  if  they  wished  to  be  truth- 
ful instead  of  supercilious,  careful  instead  of  captious,  they 
would  take  special  examples  or  at  least  types  of  extremism 
and  pour  upon  them  the  vials  or  larger  vessels  of  justifiable 
wrath,  and  not  rain  it  upon  the  just  and  the  unjust  alike, 
thereby  in  themselves  logically  and  literally  illustrating  the 
very  indiscrimination  of  which  they  so  bitterly  complain  in 
others. 

The  tu  qiioque  argument  is  usually  a  weak  one,  but  in  the 
present  contention  it  is  exceptionally  strong  and  convincing. 
There  is  not  a  specialist  in  the  land  who  does  not  every  day 
see  instances  of  mistaken  diagnosis  (and  hence  of  treatment) 
upon  the  part  of  the  general  physician.  What  oculist,  from 
examination  of  the  eyes  alone,  has  not  pointed  out  to  the 
general  physician  the  existence  of  hitherto  unsuspected  ne- 
phritis or  circulatory  disease  ?  The  aurist  is  constantly 
emphasizing  the  facts  of  ear-disease  as  a  cause  or  medium 
of  communication  of  septic  cerebral  disease,  or  as  a  result 
of  respiratory  abnormalism.  The  daily  rehearsal  of  trage- 
dies in  the  specialist's  office,  plainly  due  to  errors  in  diag- 
nosis of  the  general  physician,  is  pitiable.  "  My  doctor  told 
me  my  headaches  were  due  to  congestion  and  anemia,  and 
never  to  let  any  oculist  meddle  with  my  eyes;"  "he  didn't 
tell  me  to  have  my  teeth  looked  after;"  "  he  didn't  examine 


232  CONCERNING  SPECIALISM. 

my  urine,  although  I've  had  pain  in  the  back  for  a  year;" 
"  he  didn't  examine  my  sputum,  although  I've  had  a  hack- 
ing cough  for  a  long  time,"  etc.,  etc.  We  do  not  mean,  nor 
do  we  think,  that  the  general  physician  makes  more  errors 
than  the  specialist ;  we  mean  that  the  specialist  is  not  the 
only  medical  sinner.  It  is  our  conviction  that  the  average 
specialist  is  as  much  alive  to  the  symptoms  and  importance 
of  systemic  disease  as  is  the  average  general  physician,  and 
certainly  no  one  would  deny  that  he  is  also  as  much  alive 
to  the  abnormalisms  of  special  organs  other  than  those  of 
his  specialty.  We  sharply  emphasize  the  word  average  as 
applied  to  both  classes.  A  recent  diatribe  against  special- 
ism tirelessly  reiterates  that  the  present-day  variety  is  em- 
piric. The  charge  is,  of  course,  too  true  of  all  medicine,  but 
to  say  that  it  is  particularly  true  of  specialism  rather  than 
of  general  practice  is  topsyturvyism  and  squarely  opposed 
to  a  proper  reading  of  the  facts.  What  is  the  very  strong- 
hold of  empiricism,  what  the  enemy  that  the  most  extreme 
specialism  is  heroically  fighting  to  carry  by  storm — what 
but  general  therapeutics? 

But  if,  as  vehemently  averred,  the  specialist  is  the  super- 
ficial empiricist  and  faddist,  why  does  the  general  physician 
not  annihilate  him?  Why,  instead  of  annihilation,  does 
he  encourage  the  ever-increasing  custom  of  sending  the 
specialist  his  patients  to  treat  for  their  special  diseases  ? 
The  specialist's  fate  lies  at  the  disposal  of  the  family  phy- 
sician. Without  reference-cases  the  specialist  would  soon 
languish  and  die  his  supposably  deserved  death.  A  homely 
saw  says,  "  The  proof  of  the  pudding  is  in  the  eating."  Is 
it  not  plain  that  the  family  physician  is  learning  that  the 
specialist  has  his  uses,  that  he  has  special  ability  and  excel- 
lence gained  by  special  application  and  experience,  and  that 
in  our  day  of  the  infinite  division  of  function  and  profund- 
ity of  research  he  must  often  be  called  in  to  supplement 
the  general  therapeutist?     Has  the  family  physician  not 


CONCERNING   SPECIALISM.  233 

learned  by  bitter  experience  that  never  again  can  one  mind 
encompass  more  than  a  small  fraction  of  the  knowable,  and 
that  his  duty  to  his  patient  is  henceforth  to  learn  where 
and  of  what  nature  is  the  root  of  the  evil,  and,  beyond  a 
certain  range  of  ailments,  he  must  advise  consultation  with 
the  specialist  ? 

There  still  linger  about  the  fringes  of  our  scientific  world 
some  wonderful  specimens  of  an  antediluvian  age,  strange 
stranded  relics  of  megalosaurian  vanity,  or  of  slimy  avarice 
— the  quacks — we  mean  those  within  the  profession — who 
"treat  all  diseases,"  they  who  "  turn  no  patient  out  of  their 
offices."  Heaven  help  them — or,  rather,  help  their  pa- 
tients !  In  the  meantime,  heaven  not  helping,  the  "em- 
piric" specialist  must  patch  up  the  bungler's  work  as  best 
he  may  after  the  "all-round  man"  has  finished  with  his 
ignorance  and  mistakes.  It  is  simply  maudlin  nonsense  to 
contend  that  any  one  mind  can  longer  compass  or  master 
all  branches  of  medical  science.  It  is  painfully  evident  that 
any  one  specialty  demands  the  most  devoted  application  of 
the  very  best  mental  ability  and  training  in  order  to  keep 
abreast  of  the  giant-progress  of  the  time.  The  inevitable 
and  ruthless  march  of  scientific  progress  has  divided  and 
will  continue  to  divide  the  practice  of  medicine  into  depart- 
ments or  specialties.  There  are  undoubtedly  unfortunate 
aspects  and  results  of  this  subdivision  of  work;  they  are 
most  glaring  as  well  in  other  sciences  as  in  medical  science  ; 
but  the  law,  divide  et  impera,  is  as  predestined  and  inobvi- 
able  as  gravitation,  and  to  rail  at  it  is  utter  fatuousness.  It 
is  wiser  to  guide  it  rightly  and  utilize  it  shrewdly. 

All  critics  say  the  specialist  should  enter  upon  special 
work  only  after  thorough  training  in  general  medicine,  and 
that  is  true ;  but  it  goes  without  saying,  and  in  its  final 
analysis  it  means  that  the  schools  must  give  a  far  more 
thorough  grounding  in  general  medical  essentials  than  they 
do.     If  it  means  that  every  person  must  practice  general 


234  CONCERNING  SPECIALISM. 

medicine  for  ten  years  before  taking  up  a  specialty — then 
there  is  something  to  say  on  both  sides  of  the  question. 
We  are  unable  to  see  how  the  delivery  of  a  thousand 
women  or  the  treatment  of  five  hundred  cases  of  typhoid 
fever  can  much  help  one  to  be  a  better  aurist,  or  bacteri- 
ologist, or  ophthalmologist.  It  is  easy  to  demand  much 
of  the  young  physician,  ambitious,  short-lived  {ars  lo7iga, 
vita  brevis),  and  eager  to  be  at  his  real  life-work.  He  cer- 
tainly should  be  consulted  a  little  about  it  all.  The  advice 
savors  a  little  of  the  old  maxim  about  learning  to  swim 
without  going  near  the  water,  or  in  another  aspect  it  looks 
like  advising  an  experimcntum  in  corpore  vili ;  but  mistakes 
in  specialty-practice  are  hardly  more  expensive  than  those 
in  general  practice.  We  are  not  advising  the  young  gradu- 
ate to  plunge  into  a  specialty  at  once  ;  we  are  contending 
for  the  due  weighing  of  circumstances,  ability,  training,  and 
all  that. 

And  what  does  one  mean  by  specialism  ?  Where  will 
one  draw  the  line  ?  Should  every  family  physician  be  also 
a  surgeon  ?  Assuredly  not !  It  is  simply  impossible. 
It  is  to-day  truer  than  ever  that  no  man  can  serve  two 
masters,  much  less  a  dozen  or  two.  Should  every  physi- 
cian rely  upon  his  own  judgment  as  to  refraction?  Should 
he  treat  obscure  aural  diseases?  Should  he  be  his  own 
bacteriologist?  Not  in  any  case  if  he  have  a  particle  of 
modesty,  or  honesty,  or  interest  in  his  patient's  health. 

Beyond  all  question  and  despite  all  abuses,  the  rise  of 
specialism  has  been  the  condition  of  medical  progress. 
How  many  thousands,  nay,  millions,  of  people  are  there  to- 
day blessed  with  ocular  health  and  ability  to  carry  on  the 
duties  of  civilization  by  reason  of  the  work  of  Graefe, 
Helmholtz,  Bonders,  and  their  followers.  Would  any  of 
the  discoveries  in  ophthalmology  and  their  applications 
have  been  made  without  the  specialist  ?  What  has  revolu- 
tionized surgery  but  specialism  ?    What  is  now  revolution- 


CONCERNING   SPECIALISM.  235 

izing  all  medicine  but  the  work  of  the  specialist  in  bacteri- 
ology ?  Has  there  been  a  single  great  discovery  in 
modern  medicine  that  is  not  the  work  of  the  specialist,  or 
of  men  who,  if  living,  would  to-day  be  specialists  ?  Is 
specialism  not  the  absolute  sine  qjia  noii  of  promised  dis- 
covery in  the  future ! 

Finally,  inark  it  well,  the  family  physician  is  now  quite 
as  much  a  specialist  as  anybody  else,  and  this  whole  pother 
of  discussion  is  a  mere  meaningless  war  of  words  and  mis- 
understandings. The  general  physician  does  not  treat 
more  diseases,  perhaps  even  less,  than  the  physician  who 
confines  himself  to  a  single  organ.  In  the  progress  or 
process  of  subdivision  the  generalist  has  become  the  veri- 
est specialist.  Moreover,  almost  every  disease  has  or  may 
have  its  effects  upon  every  special  organ,  and  no  specialist 
who  ignores  general  diseases,  and  diseases  of  other  organs, 
will  henceforth  be  able  to  hold  "the  pace"  set  for  him  by 
his  broader-minded  and  more  comprehensive  rivals.  Thus 
the  evils  of  specialism — evils  that  we  acknowledge  and 
deplore — are  in  a  fair  way  of  curing  themselves.  The  way 
as  advised  by  high  authorities  should  not  be  backward, 
but  on  through !  Specialists  will  not,  cannot  renounce 
their  peculiar  work,  and  become  general  physicians ;  science 
and  humanity  cry  out  against  such  an  absurdity;  the 
way  through  is  the  right  way.  The  specialist  is  already 
becoming  the  general  physician  in  the  sense  that  he  knows 
the  limits  of  his  own  knowledge,  and  does  not  try  to  do 
what  he  cannot  do,  but  advises  consultation  with  those 
who  can  and  who  do  know.  This  also  the  specialist 
family-physician  is  fast  learning,  and  so  he  is  broadening 
also  into  general  practice,  and  no  longer  puts  "  drugs  of 
which  he  knows  little  into  a  body  of  which  he  knows  less, 
for  a  disease  of  which  he  knows  nothing." 

Theoretically  the  essence  of  the  controversy  and  of  the 
whole  matter  consists  in  the  attainment  of  the  vantage- 


236  CONCERNING   SPECIALISM. 

ground  of  accurate  knowledge  of  at  least  one  organ,  and 
of  the  diseases  of  that  organ.  From  this  standpoint  one 
cannot  worse  but  better  survey  the  whole  field  of 
medicine. 

But  the  practical  lesson  of  it  all  is  that  every  one — i.  e., 
every  "  specialist " — shall  learn  to  confine  himself  to  the 
work  he  is  competent  to  do,  and  beyond  that  to  advise 
consultation  with  others  more  competent  to  treat  certain 
organs  or  diseases;  and  the  advice  to  consult  the  specialist 
family-physician  has  been,  is,  and  will  remain  that  very 
frequently  given  by  his  coworker  in  other  specialties. 


MEDICINE  AND  CITY  NOISES.* 

Not  long  since  a  foolish  gentleman,  who  preferred  to 
live  in  New  York  or  not  to  live  at  all,  committed  suicide 
rather  than  to  longer  endure  the  ear-splitting  noise  of  the 
bells  of  a  neighboring  church.  In  thousands  of  cases  peo- 
ple are  being  made  ill,  are  committing  slow  suicide,  or  are 
being  painfully  and  slowly  killed  by  useless  city  noises. 
Noise,  then,  becomes  a  question  of  health  and  of  medical 
importance  concerning  which  physicians  should  have  a 
word  to  say  and  a  duty  to  perform. 

Scientifically,  our  rebellion  against  the  noise-makers  is 
founded  upon  the  physiologic  truth  that  rest  is  necessary 
to  health,  and  that  over-stimulation  or  persistent  stimula- 
tion of  any  organ  or  of  all  organs  is  essentially  pathogenic. 
Herbert  Spencer  secured  for  himself  a  sad  sort  of  freedom 
from  noise  by  a  mechanic  contrivance  that  held  some 
kind  of  soft  plugs  or  stoppers  in  the  external  auditory 
meatuses.  If  there  were  only  some  method  whereby  one 
could  at  will  shut  out  unwelcome  sound,  as  one  can  shut 
out  the  light  from  the  eyes ;  if  some  aurist  could  devise 
an  artificial  method  a  la  Spencer,  one  that  would  not  injure 
the  ear,  he  would  be  a  great  benefactor  to  humanity.  The 
evil  done  the  few  people  that  would  thereby  possibly  be 
burned  to  death  or  otherwise  injured  would  be  small,  as 
compared  with  that  of  the  many  deaths  and  much  sickness 
due  to  noise. 

Sociologically,  the  whole  community  has  an  unrecog- 
nized duty  as  regards  noise  that  rests  upon  a  physiologic 

*  From  the  Medical  News  of  August  26,  1893. 
237 


238  MEDICINE   AND   CITY   NOISES. 

and  esthetic  basis.  Delicacy  and  accuracy  of  response  to 
a  physiologic  stimulus  are  the  characteristic  marks  of  per- 
fection in  an  organism.  Whatever  prevents  this  is  against 
the  welfare  of  society  and  progress.  In  this  brutal  noise- 
making  era,  one  of  two  things  must  follow  the  ceaseless 
bruising  of  the  mind  by  noise.  Either  the  auditory  mechan- 
ism, and  the  nervous  mechanism  with  which  it  is  related, — 
that  is,  the  whole  mind, — must  become  blunted  in  sensitive- 
ness, crushed,  and  stupefied;  or  it  must  react  pathologic- 
ally. People  are,  therefore,  divisible  into  two  classes : 
those  whose  nervous  systems  and  minds  are  becoming 
mechanicalized,  anesthetic,  and  brutalized,  and  those  who, 
thus  failing  to  kill  sense  and  mentality,  develop  disease- 
reactions.  The  distinct  agency  of  noise  is  to  make  us 
either  savage  or  sickly.  Civilization,  of  which  noise-mak- 
ing is  a  decided  component,  is  thus  bearing  in  its  bosom  a 
self-poison,  to  its  own  undoing.  We  are  losing  all  refine- 
ment and  delicacy  of  the  senses  and  are  reverting  to  the 
condition  of  the  barbarian  whose  senses  had  to  be  pounded 
and  whipped  into  reaction,  or  we  are  becoming  neurotic, 
hysteric,  and  neurasthenic.  Generally  and  progressively, 
"  Society  "  is  either  a  crowd  of  the  mentally  stupid  or  of 
the  hyperesthetically  morbid,  and  social  amusement  is  be- 
coming a  game  of  battering  and  spurring  jaded  senses,  or 
of  ministering  to  sense-diseases. 

In  the  narrowest  sense,  we  are  medically  bound  to  re- 
duce the  amount  of  noise-making,  not  only  because  noise 
engenders  disease,  but  also  because  it  prevents  the  cure  of 
disease,  or  aggravates  disease,  very  often,  indeed,  is  the 
immediate  cause  of  death.  In  an  American  city  like  Phila- 
delphia there  are  something  like  3000  needless  deaths,  and 
the  equivalent  of  6000  years  of  needless  illness  each  year. 
What  proportion  of  this  waste  of  life  is  due  to  noise,  it  is, 
of  course,  impossible  to  say,  but  certainly  a  considerable 
proportion  is  chargeable  to  it.     The  sick  are  in  private 


MEDICINE   AND   CITY   NOISES.  239 

houses  scattered  all  through  the  city,  or  in  hospitals  that 
are  often  located  in  the  most  densely  crowded  portions. 
Every  physician  knows  how  necessary  quietness  is  to  the 
sick,  and  how  often  noise  has  been  the  last  baneful  influence 
that  the  weakened  organism  could  not  resist,  and  thus  the 
controlling  and  distinctive  cause  of  failure  to  cure. 

The  recklessness  of  production  and  the  unnecessariness 
of  modern  city  noises  are  disgustingly  astonishing.  The 
worst  of  it  is  that  they  are  even  kept  up  throughout  the 
night.  If  the  night,  at  least,  were  kept  quiet,  and  the 
organism  were  thus  given  periods  of  repose,  it  would  not 
be  so  impossible  to  preserve  normality  of  sense-reaction 
and  sanity  of  mental  reaction.  In  Philadelphia  one  or  a 
dozen  drunken  brawlers  may  make  the  night  hideous  with 
howl  and  curse  and  obscenity.  Remonstrance  with  the 
policeman  elicits  a  smile,  with  ill-concealed  contempt  for 
the  remonstrant  as  a  crank,  and  the  avowal  that  he  has  no 
authority  to  interfere.  In  Philadelphia  it  is  illegal  for 
locomotive-engineers  to  blow  whistles,  and  yet  all  night 
long  sleep,  at  least  in  summer,  is  to  healthy  ears  and  minds 
impossible  by  reason  of  this  ear-splitting  curse.  Street-car 
bells  rung  all  the  time  (by  horses  or  by  wheels)  are  no 
protection  to  the  public,  and  yet  the  public  submits  to  the 
horrible  nuisance.  The  laying  of  railway-tracks  and  the 
paving  of  streets  at  night  are  only  necessary  for  the  ad- 
vantage and  profit  of  mercenary  corporations,  and  yet  the 
authorities  have  no  power,  or  do  not  assert  it,  to  repress 
the  evil.  If  our  freedom-loving  American  submits  to  the 
dictation  of  his  tyrant  and  master  as  to  trolley-cars,  his 
master  puts  down  the  new  tracks  at  night,  with  fiendish 
noises,  and  will  by  and  by  run  the  cars  with  the  still  more 
fiendish  and  ceaseless  noises. 

From  whatever  aspect  the  subject  be  considered,  it  seems 
strange  that  people  will  submit  to  the  indignities  of  the 
noise-makers.     A  thousand  are  outraged  in  order  that  one 


240  MEDICINE   AND  CITY    NOISES. 

or  a  few  may  possibly  be  benefited.  The  shrieking  of 
whistles  and  the  ringing  of  bells  to  notify  workmen  to 
stop  or  to  start  work  is  an  instance  in  point.  Everybody 
has  a  watch  or  a  clock  at  hand.  Why,  then,  blow  the 
whistles  ?  Why,  also,  thunder  or  jangle  bells  to  tell  people 
that  should  be  asleep  what  o'clock  it  is  during  the  night? 
The  lo  per  cent,  of  people  who  go  to  church  must  be 
warned  by  bells  ;  but  have  the  90  per  cent,  no  rights  who 
do  not  need  or  heed?  and  what  about  the  sick?  The 
milkman  arouses  a  whole  neighborhood  in  delivering  a 
quart  of  milk.  The  cartmen,  the  peddlers,  the  hawkers, 
the  ragmen,  etc.,  bawl  and  howl  to  be  heard  half  a  mile 
away  if  some  other  greater  noise  near  by  do  not  drown 
their  voices.  There  are  persons  that  think  it  strange  that 
barking  dogs  and  crowing  roosters  in  a  city  should  be 
objected  to. 

All  noises  may  be  divided  into  the  necessary,  the  par- 
tially necessary,  and  the  wholly  superfluous.  The  makers 
of  the  last  class  of  noises  should  be  proceeded  against  in 
the  interests  of  the  public  health  by  all  the  forces  and  with 
all  the  vigor  at  the  command  of  physicians.  And  this  by 
all  odds  is  the  largest  and  most  injurious  class  of  noises. 
Here  is  a  worl*  ready  for  the  Associations  for  the  Public 
Good.  There  is  something  particularly  exasperating  and 
baneful  about  the  unnecessary  noise  in  the  very  fact  of  its 
unnecessariness.  Let  all  the  loafing  rowdies,  howlers, 
hawkers,  whistle-blowers,  bell-ringers,  and  the  rest  be 
incontinently  hushed,  and  especially  if  they  carry  on  their 
diabolism  at  night. 

Concerning  the  class  of  partly  preventable  noises  of 
cities,  the  greater  amount  of  them  is  connected  with  street 
traffic,  and  here  arises  the  great  need  of  good,  smooth 
pavements.  As  with  the  strawberry,  so  it  is  with  the  as- 
phalt pavement, — doubtless  a  better  one  could  have  been 
or  may  be  invented,  but  doubtless  it  never  has  been  in- 


"  MUSIC."  241 

vented.  It  is  incomprehensible  that  people  should  consent 
to  endure  the  torment  arising  from  the  stone  and  boulder 
pavements,  and  seemingly  designed,  like  African  music, 
for  creating  the  most  intolerable  clatter  possible.  In  addi- 
tion to  this  aspect  of  the  question,  there  is  another  reason 
why,  as  physicians,  we  should  do  away  with  block  and 
cobblestone  pavements  :  they  are  excellent  culture-grounds 
for  lodging  filth  and  disease-germs.  The  asphalt  pave- 
ment offers  no  such  a  nidus  and  can  be  easily  flushed  and 
kept  clean. 

The  degree  and  character  of  the  civilization  of  a  country 
are  indicated  by  the  amount  of  unnecessary  noise  it  endures, 
and  this  is  accurately  gauged  by  the  condition  of  the  pave- 
ments of  its  cities. 


THE  NOISOME  NOISE  OF  UNMUSICAL  MUSIC. 

"  The  News  is  delighted  with  the  responsive  Amen !  in 
many  lay  and  medical  journals  and  from  personal  corre- 
spondents as  regards  its  protest  against  the  brutality  of  the 
noise-makers.  It  is  a  pity  that  we  should  end  with  protest 
only,  and  that  legislative  and  police  restriction  cannot  be 
made  effective.  Let  everybody  appeal  personally  and  by 
letter  to  the  proper  administrative  authorities  and  demand 
that  illegal  noises  shall  be  stopped,  and  that  those  that  are 
not  absolutely  forbidden  shall  be  lessened.  Medical  socie- 
ties should  act  as  bodies  and  through  committees  to  abate 
these  nuisances.  The  hours  for  sleep  should  be  kept  quiet 
for  the  thousands  of  sleepers  and  not  monopolized  by  the 
half-dozen  brawlers  and  howlers.  There  seems  to  be  a 
tacit  understanding  on  the  part  of  the  police  that  anything 
that  a  South-Sea  Islander  or  an  Oriental  would  call '  music ' 


a4a  "  MUSIC." 

must  be  sacred,  no  matter  how  execrable  and  ear-splitting 
the  din  or  the  bawling.  The  police  of  Philadelphia  would 
not  think  of  stopping  a  crew  of  drunken,  singing  rowdies,  a 
darkey  band,  a  French-harp  fiend,  an  organ-grinder,  or  an 
accordion  monomaniac  from  committing  his  crimes  against 
health,  no  matter  if  the  iniquities  are  carried  out  in  what 
should  be  the  stillness  of  Sunday  or  of  the  night.  The  air- 
beaters  and  ear-bangers  have  it  all  their  own  way,  and  if  a 
lot  of  well-to-do  folk  meet  together  to  eat  and  chat,  they 
set  a  worthy  example  by  having  a  band  to  scrape  and  blow 
musical  sounds  that  not  a  single  diner  listens  to  for  a  sec- 
ond and  which  forces  him  to  roar  and  bellow  at  the  top  of 
his  voice  to  make  his  neighbor  six  inches  away  hear  a 
spoken  word.  '  What  you  talk  about  is  music,  but  what 
you  like  is  noise,'  said  a  wise  man  to  his  pupil,  and  it  is 
true  here  and  to-day." — \_Medical  News,  September  9, 1893.] 


MEDICAL  ASPECTS   OF  LIFE   INSURANCE.* 

Every  thoroughgoing  Darwinian,  Spencer  chief  among 
all,  is  never  weary  of  pointing  out  that  modern  civilization 
and  sentimentalism  works  to  the  survival  of  the  unfit,  thus 
contradicting  the  plain  trend  of  the  ordinary  laws  of  bio- 
logic evolution.  Devolution  is  in  this  way  set  against 
evolution,  and  instead  of  progressively  strengthening  and 
hardening  the  race,  there  are  subtle  forces  sapping  the 
vitality  and  rendering  the  more  luxurious  or  civilized 
unfit  for  competition  with  the  sturdier  and  biogenetically 
more  obedient  races.  The  great  growth  of  civilized  luxury 
is  thus  working  to  produce  an  ever-increasing  army  of 
social  parasites,  who,  without  aim  or  ability,  live  but  to 
enjoy  themselves,  and  make  a  miserable  failure  even  of 
that.  Indiscriminate  charity,  say  the  evolutionists,  compli- 
cates the  problem  and  exaggerates  the  natural  supply  of 
hangers-on,  while  the  weak,  the  stunted,  the  diseased,  the 
defectives  of  a  thousand  types,  are  nursed  and  coddled  by 
protection  and  kindness  to  propagate  their  like,  and  thus 
handicap  both  the  present  and  the  future  in  the  struggle 
for  existence  that  is  said  to  underlie  all  genuine  elevation 
or  even  persistence  of  stock.  Looked  at  from  this  stand- 
point exclusively,  it  has  been  contended  that  medicine 
itself  is  guilty  of  sustaining  those  in  half-life,  who,  having 
received  their  death  sentence,  postpone  the  execution,  use- 
less retainers,  pensioners,  and  camp-followers  of  the  much- 
enduring,  hard-pressed  army  of  civilization.  It  has  indeed 
been  contended  that  had  Koch  succeeded  instead  of  failing 

*  From  the  Medical  News,  January  23,  1892. 
243 


244  LIFE  INSURANCE. 

to  find  an  effective  tuberculocide,  he  would  thereby  have 
done  the  world  the  greatest  conceivable  injury  in  licensing 
the  weak-lunged,  narrow-chested,  deoxygenated  failures  to 
become  the  breeders  of  the  coming  race. 

Now,  however  false  and  one-sided  these  views  may  be, 
and  false  and  exaggerated  we  believe  them,  it  is  still  always 
advisable  to  "  heed  the  other  opinion,"  know  it,  estimate  it 
at  its  proper  value,  and  meet  it  with  logic  and  valor.  We 
may  shudder  at  the  awful  chasm  such  an  unmoral  and 
brutal  lifting  of  the  clouds  discloses  at  our  feet,  but  if  the 
deep  is  there,  the  shudder  itself  renders  us  less  steady  of 
foot,  and  less  possessed  of  aplomb.  Happily,  the  confuta- 
tion of  this  view  is  easy.  If  none  other  existed,  the  fact 
is  patent  that  the  workman's  children  are  better  breeders 
than  those  of  the  nabob.  Parasitism  begets  in  men  de- 
bauchery and  physiologic  degradation ;  in  women,  weak- 
ness, hysteria,  and  general  good-for-nothingness.  The 
children  of  the  rich  are  "  poor  risks." 

This,  however,  is  but  a  too  long  preamble  of  a  thought 
as  to  life  insurance  and  the  role  that  it  is  coming  to  play  in 
our  modern  life.  Is  it,  like  luxury  and  vice,  one  of  the 
great  powers  reversing  the  law  of  evolution  and  working  to 
race  deterioration  ? 

There  can  be  no  discussion  as  to  the  fact  that  hygiene, 
sanitation,  increased  comfort,  and  medical  science  have 
contributed  to  a  lengthening  of  the  average  human  life. 
But  the  life-insurance  rates  of  premium  continue  so  high 
that  despite  palatial  offices,  opera-bouffe  salaries,  and  all 
that,  it  becomes  a  puzzle  to  presidents  and  boards  what  to 
do  with  the  enormous  surpluses  constantly  increasing. 

Again,  medical  science  has  grown  so  shrewd  that  coming 
death  may  be  long  foreseen.  Doubtful  risks  are  refused, 
and  thus  the  insured  are  those  most  certainof  long  life. 
Risk  is  thus  reduced  to  a  minimum  and  the  surplus  natu- 
rally grows. 


LIFE  INSURANCE.  245 

The  crux  of  the  argument  is  reached  when  from  the 
foregoing  premises  it  is  logically  seen  that  with  high  pre- 
miums only  the  well-to-do  and  the  long-to-live  can  insure. 
The  poor — those  on  sentimental  or  religious  grounds  most 
needing  insurance — cannot  afford  insurance,  and  the  un- 
healthy, or  those  of  suspicious  heredity  or  occupation — 
precisely  those  again  that,  from  sympathetic  or  ethical 
reasons,  should  be  most  and  best  insured — cannot  pass  the 
examinations.  Those  children  of  the  deceased  parents 
who  were  rich  enough  and  healthy  enough  to  insure  are 
left  with  a  competence  that  gives  them  a  solid  locus  standi 
on  the  globe,  and  permits  them  again  and  always  to  multi- 
ply ;  whilst  the  poor  workman  and  the  "  poor  risk  "  who 
had  neither  the  money  nor  the  body  to  secure  insurance 
for  their  children,  early  leave  them  sadly  and  doubly  handi- 
capped in  the  race  of  life. 

Such,  undoubtedly,  has  been  the  influence  in  the  past. 
Need  it,  or  will  it  be  so  in  the  future  ?  Proofs  are  begin- 
ning to  multiply  that  an  entire  change  of  front  and  of  pol- 
icy is,  or  is  to  be,  undertaken.  Some  form  of  socialism  is 
"  in  the  air,"  fated  to  come.  The  life  of  the  community  is 
above  that  of  the  individual. 

Already  several  counteracting  forces  are  at  work  : — 

I,  The  shame  and  crime  of  dishonest  "graveyard," 
infant,  and  "  get-rich-quick  "  insurance  (or  assMXdSiCo)  com- 
panies cannot  blind  the  discerning  to  the  fact  that  mutual  and 
assessment  companies,  if  properly  watched  and  controlled, 
can  give,  and  do  give,  trustworthy  insurance  at  one-half  or 
one-fourth  the  rates  of  the  old  companies.  If,  as  need  not 
happen,  the  company  stops  to-morrow,  there  is  no  exodus 
to  Canada,  and  it  has  given  value  received  up  to  date. 
There  seems  no  reason  why  a  precise  amount  of  insurance 
should  not  be  bought  for  a  definite  time,  exactly  as  one 
buys  so  much  coffee,  house  rent,  or  a  time  loan.  And 
further,  why  should  not  the  premium  be  dependent  upon 


m6  life  insurance. 

or  in  proportion  to  the  medically-estimated  probability  ot 
life  for  each  case  ?  At  present  it  is  either  sheep  or  goats 
— two  classes  alone — but  just  as  we  all  are  a  little  wicked 
and  a  little  good,  so  our  chances  of  approaching  death  are 
of  all  degrees,  and  ratable  in  proportion. 

2.  Many  companies  are  so  transforming  their  business 
that  it  is  becoming  that  of  a  savings-fund  or  investment 
company,  the  death  element  an  excluded,  minor,  or  incon- 
siderable one. 

3.  Many  companies  that  will  not  break  the  rule,  wink  at 
or  whisper  to  their  medical  examiners  to  use  not  a  little 
discretion.  Albuminuria  is  becoming  quite  "  physiologi- 
cal ;  "  a  little  cardiac  hypertrophy,  a  slight  mitral  murmur, 
a  defective  hereditary  history,  etc.,  are  ignored.  The 
printed  rules  stand,  but  the  personal  equation  is  given  much 
play. 

4.  Companies  are  forming  to  insure  those  excluded  by 
the  rigid  medical  examiners  of  the  billion-surplus  com- 
panies, t.  e.,  accepting  more  doubtful  risks,  whilst  yet  other 
associations  are  forming  to  insure  whoever  will  without 
any  medical  examination  whatever. 

5.  Governmental  insurance  and  systematic  generalized 
pensioning  is  either  under  way  or  preparing  to  hoist  anchor. 

These  and  many  more  considerations  that  might  be  ad- 
duced go  to  prove  that  "  the  bars  are  being  let  down."  It 
is  felt  that,  taken  as  a  nation,  our  people  are  paying  for 
their  partial  and  unjustly  classified  insurance  an  excessive 
rate,  and  receiving  therefor  an  insurance  that  discriminates 
unjustly  between  the  classes  and  the  masses.  Individual- 
ism in  insurance  must  have  limits,  and  the  common  health, 
as  well  as  the  commonwealth,  has  its  significance,  duties, 
and  demands.  The  tendency  to  socialistic  legislation,  the 
generalization,  the  extension  of  the  pensioning  system  by 
corporations  and  by  government,  government  insurance 
itself — all  these  and  more  point  to  the  fact  that  the  health 


LIFE   INSURANCE.  247 

and  death  of  every  member  of  the  community  is  of  interest 
to  every  other  member.  Disease,  if  not  self-interest,  binds 
us  all  together  and  makes  our  own  well-being  depend  upon 
that  of  every  other.  Preposterous  as  it  may  seem,  the 
rates  of  premium  are  higher  for  the  healthy  and  rich  be- 
cause the  poor  and  unhealthy  are  excluded.  A  strange 
fact  is  coming  to  light:  one  of  the  richest  of  New  York  in- 
surance companies,  one  that  takes  the  most  doubtful  and 
dangerous  risks,  has  one  of  the  lowest  death  rates.  The 
life  companies  will  soon  learn  that  popularizing,  broaden- 
ing, and  generalizing,  making  less  stringent  their  medical 
examinations,  will  not  only  cheapen  the  premium,  but 
strengthen  the  company  and  multiply  its  power  for  good. 

Thus,  sooner  or  later,  one  sees  the  medical  aspect  of  a 
study,  whatever  it  may  be,  comes  uppermost.  There 
seems  no  doubt  of  the  ability  of  companies  to  lower  the 
premium,  or  to  lessen  the  rigidity  of  the  medical  examina- 
tion, or  to  do  both  combined.  As  a  skilled  and  directing 
chief  officer  of  these  great  powers  of  modern  society,  the 
medical  examiner  for  life  insurance  companies  should  use 
his  encouraging  influence  toward  extending  to  those  less 
equipped  with  health  or  money  the  beneficent  action  of 
the  communal  helping  hand  in  time  of  sickness  and  death. 


FOOT-BALL.* 

To  one  who  is  not  bereft  of  reason  and  moderation  by 
the  "  rush-h'ne "  of  a  popular  craze  or  fad,  it  is  simply 
astonishing  to  witness  the  excesses  permitted — nay,  en- 
couraged— in  the  name  of  athletics  and  education  by  the 
foot-ball  enthusiasts. 

Note,  first,  the  clear  trend  of  the  whole  affair  toward 
professionalism,  including  betting  and  gambling.  It  is 
simply  absurd  to  longer  shut  one's  eyes  to  this  fact. 
Pseudoeducators  and  wild  enthusiasts  may  deny  or  seek 
to  ignore  it,  but  it  is  fast  becoming  an  open  secret  that  men 
are  making  a  livelihood  by  the  game,  that  sometimes  their 
expenses  in  college  are  paid  for  the  purpose  of  winning 
match-games,  and  that  betting  on  the  results  of  the  matches 
is  growing  more  and  more  common.  Now,  a  frank,  out- 
and-out  professionalism  in  athletics  is  not  so  bad  a  thing,  if 
the  game  be  truly  an  athletic  and  hygienic  one,  and  not 
brutalizing  to  mind  or  body.  But  one  who  to  any  small 
extent  is  aware  of  the  way  collegiate  politics  are  becom- 
ing bound  up  with  semiprofessional  foot-ball  politics  must 
deplore  the  malevolent  influence  of  the  game  upon  modern 
educational  tendencies. 

And,  in  the  name  of  education — what  a  farce !  Can  any 
sane  man  deny  that  in  founding,  endowing,  and  encourag- 
ing institutions  of  learning,  the  object  is  to  fit  men  for  the 
intellectual  battles  of  life  ?  Can  he  deny  that  the  training 
and  development  of  the  muscular  system,  desirable  as  it  is 
or  may  be — and  there  is  only  one  thing  that  is  more  desir- 

*  From  the  Medical  News  of  November,  1893. 
248 


FOOT-BALL.  249 

able — should  be  subordinated,  as  a  feeder  and  supporter 
to  mental  athletics?  Finally,  can  it  for  a  moment  be 
denied  that  the  student  who  is  a  foot-ball  enthusiast, 
whether  player  or  "  howler,"  is  nowadays  giving  a  dispro- 
portionate amount  of  his  time  and  interest  to  the  game 
rather  than  to  his  studies  ?  Does  the  collegiate  "  foot-ballist " 
desire  rather  to  stand  at  the  head  of  his  class,  school,  or 
country,  as  the  best-educated  man,  or  to  win  the  applause 
of  20,000  spectators,  and  to  have  his  hideous  picture  and 
his  biography  spread  before  the  readers  of  every  daily 
paper  as  one  of  the  winning  team  in  a  match  game  ? 

What  do  professors  and  educators  mean  who  encourage 
such  a  tendency?  It  is  either  an  undignified  renunciation 
of  their  proper  office  and  function  in  favor  of  the  professor 
of  athletics  and  physical  training  (would  it  were  even  so 
good  a  thing  as  that !),  or  it  is  a  concession  to  a  low  type  of 
collegiate  politics  and  to  an  irrational  fashionable  fad. 

Do  they  not  suspect  that  they  are  raising  a  ghost  that 
they  cannot  "lay"  again?  Wise  educators  are  to-day 
frightened  at  the  influence  of  the  foot-ball  problem,  and  are 
seeking  earnestly  to  check  the  fatal  tendency  to  rowdyish- 
ness  and  coarseness  following  necessarily  and  closely  upon 
such  practices  and  abuses  of  the  game  instinct. 

We  are  well  aware  of  the  favorable  statistics  the 
enthusiasts  offer  as  to  the  influence  of  athletics  on  educa- 
tion. There  are  two  fallacies  in  them  :  i.  Foot-ball  is  not 
athletics,  and  the  influence  of  this  game  will  soon  reduce 
the  good  average  as  shown  by  and  due  to  athletics  proper. 
2.  The  statistics  are  gathered  and  offered  by  the  enthusiasts 
of  the  game. 

In  the  name  of  universal  and  of  university  gymnastics — 
what  a  farce  !  Instead  of  carefully  training  each  and  every 
student  physiologically  and  systematically,  so  that  his 
bodily  defects  shall  be  corrected,  and  so  that  his  body  shall 
be  a  supple,  strong,  and  beautiful  servant  of  the  mind,  there 


250  FOOT-BALL. 

is  a  concentration  of  all  training  upon  one  man  out  of  a 
hundred,  for  a  special  and  not  by  any  means  beautiful 
purpose.  Ninety-nine  let  one  do  their  exercising  (except- 
ing the  vocal  part !)  for  them,  and  we  have  the  noteworthy 
result — vicarious  athletics,  or  gymnastics  by  proxy.  Ath- 
letics by  proxy  can  only  be  compared  to  religion  by  proxy 
— the  plan  of  some  religious  sects  that  hire  a  few  profes- 
sionals to  do  their  worship  for  them — they,  the  passive 
audience,  watching  the  performance.  The  aim  of  educators, 
so  far  as  it  relates  to  athletics,  should  be  to  give  every 
student  a  rounded,  harmonious  physical  organization,  not 
to  train  a  dozen  or  two  dozen  semiprofessionals  (some- 
times wholly  professional  except  in  name),  hired,  bribed, 
or  wheedled  to  attend  the  institution,  to  be  a  show-team, 
and  win  matches  in  order  to  attract  students  to  the  institu- 
tion. The  college  that  has  not  a  splendid  gymnasium, 
large  enough  for  every  one  of  its  students,  and  a  compulsory 
system  of  physical  training  for  each  has  little  just  claim 
upon  parents  or  the  public.  The  wise  father,  other  things 
being  equal,  will  send  his  son  to  the  college  that  has  the 
best  general  gymnasium  and  the  poorest  record  in  winning 
public  athletic  games. 

In  the  name  of  esthetics  —  what  a  farce !  What  a 
remarkable  spectacle  is  that  of  a  quilted,  bepadded,  dis- 
heveled, long-haired,  begrimed,  scarred  foot-ball  hero  who 
finds  glory  in  a  savage's  scrimmage  in  the  mud!  A  sane 
and  healthy  enthusiasm  and  love  for  athletic  excellence 
must  have  some  artistic  touch  to  it.  How  would  the  hero 
of  the  games  of  classic  Greece  at  the  height  of  that  nation's 
splendid  athletic  development  compare  with  our  bruised 
and  dirty  hero  of  the  foot-ball  field? 

In  the  name  of  hygiene,  physical  and  mental — what  a 
farce!  Last  week  near  New  York  a  young  man's  neck 
was  broken  on  the  foot-ball  field.  The  enthusiast  sneers 
when  the  game  is  called  brutal,  but   in  sober  earnest  is 


FOOT-BALL.  251 

prize  fighting  less  brutal  ?  Doubtless  foot-ball  has  killed 
more  persons  than  fisticuffs.  The  papers  teem  with 
accounts  of  the  physical  injuries  of  the  players  after  every 
game.  These  young  men  are  getting  to  be  proud  of  their 
injuries,  their  sprains,  their  battered  faces,  and  wrenched 
limbs.  Is  this  not  topsy-turvy  ?  Is  this  gymnastics  ?  If 
so,  it  is  inverted  gymnastics — on  its  head  in  the  mud  !  We 
laugh  at  the  outrageously  perverted  pride  of  the  German 
student  who  exhibits  his  chopped  and  mangled  face  as  a 
proof  of  glory  instead  of  shame — and  we  are  going  the 
same  road.  Wise  fathers  are  beginning  to  refuse  their 
sons  permission  to  play  a  game  that  relies  for  its  charm 
upon  a  distinct  reversion  to  a  barbaric  type  of  sport,  in 
which  savagery,  danger,  and  the  lowest  kind  of  physical 
prowess  are  the  alluring  elements. 

In  the  name  of  example  to  the  young — what  a  farce ! 
A  game  must  be  translated  into  the  vernacular  of  the 
street-urchin  to  illustrate  clearly  its  possibility  for  evil. 
The  beautiful  games  of  cricket  and  base-ball  have,  on  the 
whole,  been  a  blessing  to  the  country  ;  they  are  not  brutal 
they  have  large  elements  of  skill  and  intellectuality  in 
them;  they  encourage  suppleness  and  all-round  develop- 
ment of  the  body,  of  the  senses,  and  of  the  mind.  A 
"scrub-game"  by  suburban  boys,  or  even  by  street  gamins, 
does  not  make  the  players  worse  than  they  naturally  are, 
does  not  arouse  all  the  fierce  and  brutal  passions  of  the 
savage  nature,  none  too  easily  held  in  control  even  by  the 
best.  But  compare  this  with  a  foot-ball  game  by  the  same 
half-civilized  or  quarter-civilized  little  savages,  and  one 
sees  quickly  the  influence  for  evil  of  apparently  so  simple 
and  small  a  thing  as  a  game.  If,  governed  by  rigid  rules 
and  umpires,  the  presence  of  a  vast,  refined  audience,  and 
the  possession  by  the  players  of  good  home-training, 
education,  and  all  that,  the  game  results  in  charges  and  the 
facts  of  "  slugging,"  and  in  passionate  enmities  and  rivalries, 


252  FOOT-BALL. 

what  then  is  to  be  expected  from  its  translation  into  the 
conditions  of  the  alley,  the  vacant  lot  of  the  city  outskirts, 
and  "  played  "  by  the  most  unregenerate  types  of  human 
nature?  Imitation  is  flattery — usually — but  in  this  instance 
the  flattery  is  nauseating  even  to  the  flattered. 

It  is  a  cause  of  deep  regret  that  we  should  approach  the 
ideal  of  Rome  in  our  national  sports,  rather  than  that  of 
Greece,  and  it  is  especially  significant  when  educators  and 
universities  show  this  tendency.  One  would  not  expect 
them  to  encourage  gladiatorial  rather  than  intellectual  and 
truly  athletic  contests. 

Have  we  not  more  patriotism  and  originality  than  to 
accept  this  worn-out,  brutal  old  game  second-hand  from 
England?  Have  we  not  enough  intellect  to  put  some  true 
"  play,"  some  ingenuity,  and  spontaneity  into  our  national 
sport?  Have  we  not  enough  mind  to  introduce  something 
into  play  except  "a  secret  code  of  signs,"  "undergraduate 
rules,"  and  a  coarse  scrimmage  of  a  dozen  bleeding, 
bunched,  and  scuffling  fellows  sprawling  in  the  mud? 

If  not  in  the  name  of  general  education,  then  in  the 
name  of  medical  education  ;  if  not  in  the  name  of  moral- 
ity, then  in  the  name  of  medicine;  if  not  in  the  name  of 
esthetics,  then  in  the  name  of  physiology;  if  not  in  the 
name  of  social  progress,  then  in  the  name  of  hygienic 
progress — it  is  time  that  we  should  command.  Halt!  The 
game  is  un-American  and  absolutely  opposed  to  the  spirit 
of  true  education,  whether  of  the  mind  or  of  the  body. 


PROMISED  FOOT-BALL  REFORM.* 

To  one  who  can  read  between  the  lines,  the  actions  and 
arguments  of  the  foot-ball  advocates  are  furnishing  a  con- 

*  From  the  Medical  News,  January  13,  1894. 


FOOT-BALL.  253 

stant  source  of  excellent  amusement.  They  are  bound  to 
take  note  of  the  arguments,  moral,  educational,  and  physi- 
ologic, against  the  game  as  it  has  existed,  but  more  espe- 
cially are  they  forced  to  consider  the  profound  wave  of 
popular  indignation  rising  against  past  excesses.  Instead 
of  a  means  of  attraction  of  students  it  is  quite  possible 
that  the  game  may  cause  subtraction.  In  this  dilemma  a 
way  out  has  been  found  by  reluctant  acceptance  and  forced 
advocacy  of  reform.  Reform  is  promised,  but  the  funny 
part  comes  in  when  we  note  the  ill-concealed  disgust  at  the 
nauseous  dose.  However,  the  critics  of  foot-ball  excess 
may  rest  satisfied  with  their  work,  if  reform  of  the  rules  be 
really  brought  about,  and  if  it  be  such  as  to  do  away  with 
the  evils  of  the  game.  This  will  be  the  critics'  work,  and 
this  is  all  they  have  wished.  "  Reform  within  the  party  " 
was  not  tried  spontaneously,  and  has  only  been  promised 
by  force  of  compulsion,  criticism,  and  popular  feeling  from 
without.  The  critics  may  also  point  out  that  the  specious- 
ness  of  the  logic  so  far  offered  in  defense  is  apparent  in  the 
fact  that  every  line  of  the  argument  could  be  applied  in 
favor  of  boxing.  Indeed,  in  the  late  magazine  defenses  of 
the  game  every  time  the  word  foot-ball  occurs  it  could  be 
replaced  by  the  word  glove-fighting  with  equal  and  even 
with  sounder  logic.  The  difference  of  acceptance  of  the 
logic  consists  solely  in  the  fact  that  foot-ball  is  the  fashion- 
able fad  of  the  day  and  prize-fighting  is  not.  There  will 
never  fail  able,  at  least  plenteous,  defenses  of  the  customs 
and  demands  of  the  Zeitgeist.  Every  English  Bishop,  the 
powers,  votes,  and  logic  of  the  Established  Church  (by 
name,  of  Christ,  and  of  Religion)  arrayed  themselves  against 
the  abolition  of  slavery — all  of  which  does  not  affect  the 
fact  that  slavery  was  wrong,  unchristian,  and  irreligious. 
To  flatter  the  Zeitgeist  and  "  the  powers  that  be  "  is  pleasing 
to  that  fickle  and  faithless  tyrant,  and,  temporarily,  very, 
very  profitable  to  the  flatterer.     But,  again,  flattery,  ap- 


254  FOOT-BALL. 

plause,  profit,  and  honor  cannot  alter  the  facts  that,  as  car- 
ried on  of  late,  foot-ball  has  not  been  in  the  interests  of 
true  athletics  or  genuine  physiologic  culture,  and  has  been 
very  far  from  furthering  the  clear  purposes  of  education 
and  of  educational  institutions.  Hence  when  the  advocates 
of  the  game  (however  grudgingly  and  slurringly)  acknowl- 
edge the  past  abuses,  and  promise  such  reform  as  will  do 
away  with  these  abuses,  we  warmly  cry  them  welcome,  and 
beg  pardon  for  any"  excess  of  zeal  "  on  our  part.  We  are 
all,  it  seems,  in  favor,  and  most  heartily,  too,  of  the  best  and 
most  perfect  development  of  the  human  body ;  but  we  pro- 
test that  this  must  be  consistent  with,  nay,  subordinated  to, 
the  best  and  most  perfect  development  of  the  human  mind. 


MUSCULAR   DEVELOPMENT  AND   USE  THE 
CONDITIONS  OF  HEALTH.* 

It  was,  we  believe,  a  saying  of  Pascal  that  the  evils  that 
afflict  mankind  arise  from  an  inability  to  sit  still  in  a  room 
— meaning  thereby  that  in  useless  and  ill-considered  action 
is  to  be  found  the  origin  of  much  tribulation,  and  that 
calmly  thinking  out  the  best  methods  of  action  in  advance 
would  obviate  it.  But  the  modern  physician  and  hygienist 
must  often  feel  like  reversing  Pascal's  mot,  and  saying  that 
the  evils  that  afflict  mankind — or  more  truly  womankind 
(the  same  thing,  however !) — come  mainly  from  sitting  still 
in  a  room.  We  mean  by  this  that  the  great  and  the 
increasing  prevalence  of  sedentary  and  indoor  occupations 
inflicted  on  human  bodies  is  already  ripening  a  wretched 
source  of  physical  (and  hence  psychic  and  moral)  suffering. 
If  there  is  any  truth  at  all  in  evolution  it  is  that  animal  and 
human  life  and  progress  have  always  been  conditioned 
upon  the  exercise  of  the  muscular  system,  that  function 
precedes  and  begets  structure,  and  that  disuse  leads  to 
atrophy  and  death. 

The  disuse  of  the  muscular  system  that  is  a  result  of 
civilization  is  the  prolific  source  of  much  of  the  disease  of 
modern  life  and  an  illustration  of  the  biologic  law.  All  the 
discoveries  of  modern  medicine  and  science,  every  bacteri- 
ologic  truth,  every  known  etiology  of  disease,  simply  con- 
firms the  truth  that,  together  with  cleanliness,  muscular 
health  and  development  are  the  necessary  conditions  of 
freedom  from  disease,  and  that  there  is  no  health  of  the 
muscles   without   use    of  the   muscles.     The   bacillus   of 

*  From  the  Medical  News,  November  1 8,  1893. 
255 


256  MUSCULAR   DEVELOPMENT  AND   HEALTH. 

tuberculosis  has  no  power  of  harm  to  a  person  with  proper 
thoracic  and  pulmonary  expansion  and  development.  All 
"  consumption  cures  "  except  this  one  are  useless,  and  this 
with  some  exceptions  is  effective  in  prophylaxis  or  cure. 
There  is  hardly  a  disease  that  does  not  equally  well  illus- 
trate this  truth. 

What  is  civilization  doing  with  this  law  ?  It  is  crowding 
people  into  huge  cities,  where  every  means  of  artificial 
locomotion,  every  labor-saving  apparatus,  and  every  neces- 
sity of  business  are  all  working  to  the  same  end  of  inactive 
muscles.  From  the  weak,  half-atrophied  muscles  naturally 
follow  the  defective  digestion  and  assimilation  of  food,  and 
the  over-wrought  hyperesthetic  morbid  nervous  system, 
ever  vainly  seeking  to  undo  and  to  right  the  evils  of 
denutrition,  hypernutrition,  and  muscular  inactivity.  Our 
food  is  premasticated  and  we  are  becoming  edentulous, 
and  from  the  advertisements  of  predigested  foods  it  would 
appear  that  we  shall  soon  have  no  need  of  a  private  stom- 
ach, liver,  or  pancreas,  because  we  can  and  should  buy 
these  products  from  the  slaughter-house  and  laboratory, 
and  thus  save  personal  wear  and  tear.  It  is  in  the  line  of 
the  much  expounded  physiologic  division  of  labor.  But 
that  line  logically  and  inevitably  ends  in  the  condition  of 
some  slave-holding  ants  that  cannot  move,  and  unless  fed 
by  their  slaves  die  of  starvation  even  when  food  is  before 
them.  Of  course,  we  already  have  analogues  of  these 
little  organisms  in  the  increasing  horde  of  urban  hysterics, 
neurasthenics,  roues,  and  tramps  of  various  sorts,  both 
aristocratic  and  ragged. 

And  lastly,  comes  the  sham-science  that  would  supply 
the  want  of  healthy  vital  powers  of  all  kinds,  cerebral, 
muscular,  testicular,  and  what-not,  burned  out  by  abuse  or 
atrophied  by  disuse,  by  means  of  squirting  into  the  veins 
or  under  the  skin  some  of  the  supposed  vital,  but  really 
dead  and  inert,  juices  of  animals. 


MUSCULAR   DEVELOPMENT   AND   HEALTH.  257 

And  even  our  frantic  attempts  to  remedy  the  evil  of 
muscular  inactivity,  with  its  spawn  of  varied  disease,  are 
themselves  morbid,  and  sometimes  serve  to  increase  the 
evil.  This  fact  becomes  plain  in  our  rage  for  athletics  by 
proxy,  and  in  the  steady  trend  of  athletic  games  toward 
professionalism  and  newspaper  notoriety,  sensationalism, 
to  the  encouragement  of  betting,  and  to  the  more  brutal 
sorts  of  arena  combats. 

So  far  as  cities  are  concerned,  one  of  the  most  crying  of 
evils  is  over-pressure  of  school-children.  Every  physician 
has  daily  before  his  eyes  the  sad  results,  and  he  knows 
that  instead  of  medicine  the  poor  little  body  needs  play  and 
exercise,  and  out-of-door  air  and  sunshine.  All  of  the 
book-cramming  that  can  be  jammed  into  them  will  never 
compensate  for  the  pallor,  the  pipe-stem  legs,  the  narrow 
chests,  and  the  stunted  or  abnormal  growth. 

The  city  child  needs  what  it  cannot  have,  country  life. 
Failing  in  this  it  should  be  supplied  with  abundant,  health- 
ful gymnasium  exercise,  under  the  careful  eye  of  expert 
and  discriminating  teachers  of  hygiene  and  physiologic  de- 
velopment. 

All  of  this  is  doubly  true  as  regards  girls  and  women. 
Fashion  and  house-incarceration  and  wealth  are  reducing 
our  women  to  sad  specimens  of  bodily  and  muscular  ill- 
health,  flabbiness,  and  undevelopment.  Either  publicly, 
or  in  private  to  parents,  every  physician  can  point  out  the 
truth,  and  by  his  advice  may  help  to  avert  the  crop  of 
coming  disease  or,  in  some  degree,  to  cure  the  pathetic 
instances  that  fall  under  his  care. 


EVERYBODY'S  MEDICAL  DUTY.* 

Perhaps  you  feel  surprised  and  doubtful  as  to  the  exist- 
ence of  any  medical  duty  you  may  owe,  either  to  your- 
selves or  to  your  fellows.  You  probably  are  inwardly  say- 
ing that  you  know  nothing  about  medicine,  and  that  you 
employ  a  physician  to  attend  to  medical  matters. 

My  purpose  to-night  is  to  impress  upon  you  the  truth 
that  each  one  of  you  has  many  and  very  important  medi- 
cal duties,  and  that  you  must  no  longer  shirk  them,  because 
these  duties  are  most  imperative  and  vital  to  the  lives  of 
each  and  every  one.  The  medical  profession  is  struggling 
under  the  Atlantean  world  of  deputed  responsibility  you 
have  thrust  upon  its  shoulders,  but  the  labor  is  hard  and 
the  result  less  successful  because  of  your  persistence  in 
vicariously  ridding  yourselves  of  the  duty.  In  politics,  all 
good  citizens  are  convinced  that  leaving  Government  and 
Legislation  to  professional  politicians  and  bosses  is  highly 
immoral  and  ineffective — it  is  political  crime  and  leads  to 
the  death  of  patriotism.  So  in  medicine  you  must  not  turn 
your  own  work  unquestioningly  over  to  the  medical  bosses, 
but  must  see  to  a  large  part  of  it  yourselves;  you  must  at 
least  strengthen  the  power  of  those  who  are  able  to  be 
trusted  with  medical  office-holding,  and  must  destroy  the 
power  of  the  corrupt  bosses.  In  other  words,  you  must 
personally  attend  the  primaries. 

Our  medical  duties,  like  any  duties,  do  not  refer  alone  to 
ourselves  or  to  our  families.     The  public  health  is  your 

*  An  Address  delivered  before  the  Unitarian  Qub  of  Philadelphia,  February 
II,  1892. 

258 


EVERYBODY'S   MEDICAL   DUTY.  259 

health.  The  community  is  a  vast  family,  and  the  possibil- 
ity of  disease  and  death  unites  us  in  one  common  bond  of 
self-interest.  If  each  of  us  did  our  duty  in  the  prevention 
of  disease,  the  average  life  would  be  lengthened,  life-insur- 
ance premiums  would  be  less  by  a  half,  and  the  friction,  sin, 
sorrow,  and  vice  of  life  immeasurably  reduced. 

One  of  our  medical  duties  of  which  you  are  most  shame- 
fully neglectful  is  lack  of  helpful  sympathy  with  the  medi- 
cal profession.  Here  is  a  body  of  men,  the  like  of  which 
in  devotion  and  self-sacrifice  to  the  interests  of  society  has 
hardly  ever  been  seen.  Assuredly  nothing  like  the  specta- 
cle exists  to-day  in  any  other  equally  large  class  of  men. 
In  a  recent  novel  Robert  Louis  Stevenson  says  :  "  There 
are  men  who  stand  above  the  common  herd,  the  soldier,  the 
sailor,  and  the  shepherd  unfrequently ;  the  artist  rarely ; 
rarer  still  the  clergyman  ;  the  physician  almost  as  a  rule." 
In  Philadelphia  there  are  besides  the  private  cases  annually 
treated  by  physicians,  about  half  a  million  public  cases  of 
disease  among  the  poor  (and  many  that  are  not  poor,  alas  !) 
for  absolutely  nothing.  Every  hospital  of  the  land  is 
carried  on  by  the  unpaid  labor  of  physicians.  Are  there 
twenty-five ;  is  there  one  great  institution,  or  one  ever  so 
little  institution,  where  poor  folks  can  go  and  get  legal 
advice,  counsel,  and  help,  gratis  ?  Do  your  tailors  furnish 
people  with  clothes  for  nothing  ?  If  you  get  married  or 
die,  your  mininster  is  paid,  and  rightly  so,  for  his  labor. 
Far  more  than  this,  scientific  medical  men  are  working,  not 
only  to  cure,  but  with  undaunted,  tireless  zeal,  to  prevent 
disease.  Whilst  almost  all  the  rich  are  forming  plots, 
"  combines,"  and  "  trusts  "  to  increase  their  share  of  the 
commonwealth,  and  to  magnify  their  power,  whilst  the 
tradesmen  and  mechanics  and  laborers  of  every  kind  are 
forming  unions  and  trade-guilds  to  protect  themselves,  the 
medical  profession  not  only  forms  no  union,  no  self-protect- 
ing guild,  but  is  laboring  heroically  to  render  itself  useless 


26o  EVERYBODY'S   MEDICAL   DUTY. 

and  occupationless.  Now,  despite  this  splendid  unsel- 
fishness and  zeal  for  your  welfare,  how  do  you  treat 
the  profession  ?  You  cultivate  and  support  quackery, 
which  is  one  of  the  curses  of  civilization,  and  which  in  in- 
juring the  profession  slightly,  does  the  community  infinitely 
more  harm.  The  newspapers  are  filled  with  quack  adver- 
tisers, bent  only  on  getting  money,  without  medical  knowl- 
edge, caring  nothing,  knowing  nothing,  about  curing. 
You  support  all  this,  because  you  allow  servants,  family,  or 
friends  to  patronize  these  wretches.  Sectarianism  in  medi- 
cine, a  moral  and  medical  sin,  is  finally  your  work.  Not 
only  this,  but  of  the  regular  medical  profession  you  too 
often  prefer  the  quack  in  the  profession  to  the  better  man. 
If  you  see  in  the  daily  papers  an  account,  a  "  reading 
notice,"  of  some  miraculous  operation  performed  by  some 
sneaking  advertiser  in  the  profession,  or  some  pompous 
nonsense  about  professional  matters,  you  think  this  must  be 
a  very  smart  man,  and  when  ill,  you  will  go  to  him.  You 
do  not  think  that  physicians  who  do  these  things  have 
directly  or  indirectly  been  in  collusion  with  the  newspaper 
reporter,  that  they  are  advertisers  and  quacks,  whose  pro- 
fessional opinion  is  scientifically  valueless. 

Moreover,  whenever,  to  protect  you  from  their  scoun- 
drelism,  the  medical  profession  tries  to  get  laws  passed 
against  charlatans,  laws  to  stop  their  knaveries,  laws  to 
elevate  the  medical  profession  and  keep  out  of  it  the  ill- 
educated  and  the  unfitted,  you  do  not  help  us,  but  allow 
the  interested  and  combined  hordes  of  quacks  to  so 
intimidate  your  legislators  that  they  fear  to  vote  for  de- 
cency. 

Lastly,  you  allow  the  patent-medicine  outrage  to  flourish, 
to  control  legislation,  to  poison  your  bodies  and  pollute 
your  health,  and  befoul  every  newspaper,  barn,  house,  fence, 
and  field  with  beastly  advertisements. 

Some  day  the  darling  child  of  your  own  life  sickens  and 


EVERYBODY'S   MEDICAL   DUTY.  261 

dies,  or  recovers  to  become  a  physical  weakling  and 
sufferer.  If  you  ever  come  to  realize  that  this  was  because 
you  did  not  guard  against  tuberculous  or  otherwise  diseased 
milk  and  meat,  you  then  realize  that  you  have  shirked  a 
medical  duty — or,  if  you  please,  a  medical  self-interest, 
because  self-interest  and  duty  are  often  synonymous.  If 
you  find  the  poison  of  subtle  disease  striking  down  yourself 
or  friends,  you  again  may  come  to  know  of  a  medical  duty 
you  have  forgotten  of  preventing  typhoid  fever  or  other 
contagious  disease  by  proper  drainage  and  sanitary  meas- 
ures. A  hundred  such  illustrations  readily  occur  to  you, 
now  that  you  think  of  the  question. 

It  is  a  strange  fact  that  people  cleanly  in  some  things  are 
filthy  in  others.  The  medical  motive  may  come  in  play 
when  the  motive  of  cleanliness  has  been  wholly  forgotten. 
Hence  it  is  that  some  people  who  seem  to  care  nothing  for 
certain  kinds  of  filthiness,  may  come  to  care  for  the  possible 
disease  that  often  accompanies  the  filth.  For  example,  I 
never  go  on  the  street  that  I  am  not  nauseated  and  shocked 
to  see  some  well-dressed,  or  rather  expensively  and  poorly- 
dressed,  woman  sweeping  the  trail  of  her  dress  through  pol- 
lution and  indescribable  street-deposits.  She  does  not  seem 
to  care  for  the  nastiness  of  it,  but  if  she  could  realize  that  she 
may  be  bringing  home  with  her  some  of  the  most  horrible  and 
deadly  germs  of  disease,  to  be  dried  and  scattered  over  her 
home,  to  be  breathed  by  her  family,  and  perhaps  to  fatally 
poison  bodily  life — if  she  knew  this  as  physicians  know  it, 
she  would  certainly  not  do  it.  One  other  little  example  : 
On  coming  to  Philadelphia,  my  wife  and  I  were  maddened 
every  market-day  by  being  forced  to  buy  and  have  brought 
home  fowls  long  dead,  but  with  the  intestinal  filth  still 
polluting  the  flesh.  Bacteriologists  know  what  a  breeding- 
ground  of  pathogenic  bacteria  and  toxic  ptomains  and 
leucomains  the  digestive  organs  of  an  animal  are.  Why 
in  the  name  of  decency  you  will  allow  your  market-men 


262  EVERYBODY'S   MEDICAL   DUTY. 

to  SO  humbug  and  doubly  cheat  you,  I  cannot  understand. 
Demand  that  your  poultry  be  "  drawn  "  before  buying  it. 

You  see  I  am  dead  in  earnest,  and  propose  being  as 
intensely  practical.     There  is  no  use  in  mincing  words. 

I  would  like  to  curse  and  ridicule  the  corset,  but  it's  no 
use.  Why  women  will  do  so,  is  beyond  the  reason  of  man. 
It  is  hideous  and  deadly.  Every  man  whom  they  think 
they  are  pleasing  by  crushing  lungs,  liver,  and  pelvic 
organs, — is  in  reality  disgusted  by  the  wasp -waist.  With- 
out it  the  medical  profession  would  soon  find  itself  much 
out  of  work,  yet, — how  we  do  hate  it! 

And  so  I  could  wander  on  with  a  thousand  illustrations. 
Every  article  of  dress,  almost  every  article  of  food  bought, 
the  water  you  drink,  has  a  medical  significance.  The  way 
food  is  cooked  and  the  way  it  is  eaten,  certainly  have.  The 
way  you  sit  in  reading,  and  how  you  hold  your  book,  may 
mean  years  of  ocular  suffering  and  pain.  Out  of  the 
myriad  of  things  I  could  and  would  like  to  scold  about,  let 
me  choose  more  specifically  two  or  three  and  go  a  little 
into  details. 

Take  the  milk  brought  to  your  breakfast  table.  You 
may  never  have  thought  of  this,  but  there  are  a  hundred 
medical  problems  involved  in  the  milk-supply.  In  not 
one  of  these  vitally  important  problems  have  you  taken  as 
much  of  an  interest  as  you  have  in  two  trivial  and  silly 
things.  You  have  been  worried  and  angered  by  the  milk- 
man's knavery  in  watering  his  milk, — but  if  he  used  pure 
water,  it  was  a  small  affair  compared  to  other  things. 
You  should  have  seen  to  many  things  before  the  pump- 
handle.  The  second  source  of  your  vexation  has  doubtless 
been  the  price  of  the  milk.  You  have  been  unwilling  to 
pay  ten  cents  a  quart,  when  a  little  consideration  would 
have  shown  you  that  the  best  pure  milk  from  rightly-bred 
and  properly-fed  and  well-cared-for  cows  cannot  be  deliv- 
ered to  you  for  less  than  fifteen  or  twenty  cents  a  quart. 


EVERYBODY'S   MEDICAL   DUTY.  263 

You  have  forced  your  dairyman  to  be  slovenly,  to  give 
you  dirty,  diseased,  and  diluted  milk.  Having  done  so, 
you  turn  about  and  abuse  him  for  what  you  have  demanded 
and  commanded.  To  start  and  reform  in  this  matter,  25  to 
50  families  might  join  together  and  agree  to  give  some 
farmer  15  or  20  cents  for  milk  supplied  under  proper  con- 
ditions. In  Baltimore  a  sanitary  milk  company  with  a  capi- 
tal of  ^100,000  has  been  formed,  rigid  inspection  of  the 
herds  as  to  health,  stabling,  milking,  and  handling  the  milk 
being  the  objects  aimed  at.  The  herd  must  not  be  of  the 
often  tuberculous  and  diseased  monstrosity,  the  Jersey,  or 
other  highly-bred  cows,  but  the  average  animal  of  fair  breed- 
ing. Many  safeguards,  all  expensive,  as  to  water,  food, 
stabling,  must  be  observed.  The  milk  is  not  healthy  at  cer- 
tain seasons  of  the  cow's  life.  The  animal  must  be  bedded, 
curried,  kept  clean  with  as  much  scrupulousness  as  if  she 
were  a  blooded  race-horse.  The  cows  that  now  secrete  your 
milk,  live,  lie  in,  and  all  their  lives  are  covered  with  filth. 
The  milker  is  dirty,  often  infectiously  diseased,  and  the  milk- 
ing often  dirty.  Persons  recovering  from  scarlet  fever,  in 
milking  a  cow  have  been  known  to  infect  the  milk  and  thus 
give  the  disease  to  persons  using  milk.  The  milk-vessels 
often  have  not  been  scalded.  The  milk  should  be  brought 
to  you,  if  possible,  in  an  hour  or  two  after  the  milking, 
having  been  quickly  cooled,  and  kept  at  a  low  temperature, 
in  sweet,  hermetically  sealed  glass  vessels,  these  immedi- 
ately emptied,  and  immediately  boiled,  dried,  and  again 
scalded  until  refilled.  The  diseased,  old,  and  impure  milk 
you  are  now  using  should  be  sterilized,  and  you  should 
look  in  some  day  at  the  cellars  and  back  rooms  of  your 
milkman  when  he  isn't  expecting  you,  and  see  how  the 
vessels  are  cleaned,  or  not  cleaned,  and  what  fine  chances 
you  have  to  give  your  babies  tubercle-bacilli  and  poison 
them  with  the  impurities  of  the  simplest  and  most  neces- 
sary of  all  foods.     A  thimbleful  of  Boston  milk  contains 


«64  EVERYBODY'S   MEDICAL   DUTY. 

on  the  average  2,335,500  bacteria,  the  Charleston  samples 
over  four  million,  the  North-end  only  three-quarters  of  a 
million.  These  samples  were  taken  directly  from  the 
wagons.  But  the  average  number  of  bacteria  in  grocery 
samples  (when  the  milk  stood  longer  and  was  dirty)  was 
4,557,000  per  cubic  centimeter.  The  lowest  number  in 
any  sample  was  30,600.  In  Halle,  Germany,  as  many  as 
30,000,000  have  been  found.  The  average  of  American 
cities  is  estimated  to  be  at  least  one  million.  For  nursing 
infants  requiring  cow's  milk,  there  are  a  great  many  special 
precautions  and  rules  to  follow  to  avoid  disease. 

But  you  will  object  that  you  have  no  time  to  attend  to 
all  these  matters, — and  quickly  will  come  the  answering 
question,  "  Why  don't  you  hire  and  commission  some  one 
to  do  it  ?  "  "  Oh !  but  we  have  a  Board  of  Health  to 
attend  to  that."  "  Have  you,  indeed  ?  And  you  don't  pay 
its  members  a  cent.  Would  you  give  your  life  to  attend- 
ing to  drains,  and  cess-pools,  and  diseased  milk,  and  bad 
meat,  and  preventing  infectious  diseases,  and  all  that, — for 
nothing, — absolutely  nothing?"  Take  milk  again; — the 
only  genuine  reform  will  consist  in  systematic,  scientific 
examination  and  ordering  of  the  dairy  farms  and  herds  by 
public  officers,  well-paid  and  intellectually  equipped. 
Typhoid  fever,  scarlet  fever,  diphtheria,  tuberculosis,  and 
perhaps  other  diseases,  may  be  and  are  brought  to  your 
homes  in  milk.  The  evil  must  be  attacked  at  its  source. 
If  the  President  of  the  Board  of  Health  should  go  before 
Councils  and  ask  for  an  appropriation  for  properly  inspect- 
ing and  regulating  dairy  farms,  would  he  get  it  ?  You 
should  not  sleep  to-night  until  you  write  your  Councilmen 
urging  them  to  make  such  an  appropriation  and  many 
others  also.  Time  and  time  again  Councilmen  were  asked, 
by  the  Philadelphia  Board  of  Health,  for  appropriations 
for  city  milk  inspectors.  There  were  ten  or  twenty  millions 
of  dollars  for  a  marble  palace  for  city  officers,  but  not  ten 


EVERYBODY'S   MEDICAL   DUTY.  265 

dollars  to  protect  the  lives  and  health  of  the  people.  After 
a  dozen  years  of  struggle  against  the  milkmen,  their 
attorneys  and  friends,  a  wee-bit  of  an  appropriation  and  a 
half-starved  department  with  insufficient  funds  have  been 
secured.  The  work  cannot  be  half  done,  but  already  your 
milk  is  far  better  in  quality,  and  there  is  somewhat  less 
danger  of  deadly  disease  being  in  it.  But  ten  or  fifteen 
men  are  needed  instead  of  five,  and  you  should  urge  your 
Councilmen  to  provide  them.  If  you  estimate  a  human 
life  at  its  average  value  according  to  average  life-length 
and  average  wages,  the  community  would  save  millions  by 
appropriating  money  liberally  for  inspection  of  dairy  farms, 
milk,  etc. 

The  same  lesson  is  taught  by  the  need  of  meat  inspec- 
tion. Cattle  with  tuberculosis  and  actinomycosis  are  killed 
in  this  city  and  you  are  possibly  eating  the  meat.  Up  to 
now,  you,  Mr.  and  Mrs,  Public,  would  not  vote  a  cent  for 
stopping  this.  In  Berlin  they  have  nearly  300  men  con- 
stantly employed  to  examine  all  meat  offered  for  sale  and 
pronounce  upon  its  healthiness.  In  democratic  Philadel- 
phia, up  to  a  few  weeks  ago,  you  had  not  one  man.  I 
learn  that  from  January  ist,  appropriation  has  been  made 
for  three  inspectors.  At  least  25  are  needed,  so  large  is 
the  city,  in  order  to  adequately  do  the  work. 

To  show  you  how  great  is  the  need,  let  me  tell  you  that 
within  a  month  or  two  a  few  men,  unpaid,  and  moved  only 
by  the  public  good,  have  with  little  search  arrested  25 
butchers  for  selling  diseased  meat  and  bound  them  over  in 
;^8oo  bail  for  future  trial.  A  frightfully  aggravating  fact 
about  this  question  is  that  cattle  shipped  here  for  export  to 
other  countries  are  examined  by  the  U.  S.  Government 
Inspectors,  who  condemn  the  diseased  cattle,  and  will  not 
permit  their  shipment.  These  diseased  cattle,  however,  it 
seems,  are  quite  good  enough  for  you,  so  they  are  killed 
and  you  buy  the  meat  that  you  are  ashamed  to  ship  abroad. 
23 


266  EVERYBODY'S   MEDICAL   DUTY. 

Was  ever  anything  more  opera-boufife  and  disgusting  at 
once?  If  you  should  ask  why,  as  in  the  case  of  milk  we 
must  go  to  the  dairy-farm,  we  do  not  again  go  to  the/ons 
et  origo  mali,  and  at  the  West  stop  the  shipment  of  diseased 
cattle  altogether,  the  answer  is  quick  and  sharp  :  Because 
you  and  your  servant-masters,  your  legislators,  have  failed 
in  your  medical  duty.  Politicians  have  no  time  to  attend 
to  the  welfare  of  the  public  business ;  they  have  enough  to 
do  to  attend  to  their  own — vulgarly  called,  "  feathering 
their  own  nest."  The  live-stock  commissioners  of  Illinois 
have  tried  to  prevent  the  sale  of  diseased  cattle  in  the  Chi- 
cago market,  but  immediately  a  billion-dollar  Whisky 
Trust,  with  its  billion  distillery-slop-fed  cattle,  opposes, 
fights  the  commissioners  in  court,  and  beats  them.  The 
people  must  eat  diseased  meat  or  the  Whisky  Ring  will  not 
make  so  much  money. 

Frankly,  one  begins  to  wonder  if  democracy  is  the  best 
form  of  government  after  all. 

As  to  disinfection,  you  allow  for  a  city  of  a  million  of 
inhabitants  only  enough  money  to  pay  the  small  salary  of 
one  man.  But  every  additional  agent  you  would  add,  say 
up  to  a  dozen,  would  save  you  money  in  physicians'  fees 
and  undertakers'  bills,  and  would  save  ten  or  a  hundred 
times  the  salaries  in  lost  time,  lost  health,  and  lost  life. 

No  ward  wants  the  Municipal  Hospital  for  infectious 
diseases  within  its  limits,  and  so  there  is  a  tendency  to 
starve  it  out,  and  it  is  even  advised  to  shut  it  up.  In  time 
of  peace, — I  mean  when  no  epidemic  disease  is  raging, — 
it  has  a  limited  but  still  very  necessary  usefulness,  but  let 
war  break  out,  let  an  epidemic  of  small-pox  or  cholera 
come,  and  without  the  municipal  hospital  the  calamity 
would  be  appalling.  What  kind  of  a  general  is  he  that 
dismantles  his  harbor-forts  in  time  of  peace  ? 

The  allusion  to  small-pox  brings  to  mind  the  fact  that 
during  the  last  ten  years  (i 880-1 890)  there  have  been  in 


EVERYBODY'S   MEDICAL   DUTY.  267 

Philadelphia  1950  deaths  due  to  this  wholly  preventable 
disease.  When  a  railway  watchman  by  carelessness  causes 
a  collision,  and  a  dozen  persons  are  killed,  you  are  justly 
horrified,  but  when  1950  people  are  killed  by  your  careless- 
ness, you  are  not  at  all  concerned  about  it.  Have  you 
been  vaccinated  or  revaccinated  within  the  last  six  years  ? 
Are  you  seeing  to  it  that  every  member  of  your  family, 
your  servants  and  friends,  are  revaccinated  every  few 
years  ?     If  you  are  not,  do  not  blame  the  brakeman. 

You  perhaps  think  measles  a  slight  ailment,  that  is  not 
very  dangerous,  but  957  deaths  from  it  are  chronicled  in 
this  city  in  the  past  ten  years.  A  large  proportion  of  these 
deaths  were  needless,  and  could  have  been  obviated  by 
proper  precautions. 

Scarlet  fever  you  know  as  a  more  serious  disease,  but 
you  may  be  surprised  to  learn  that  it  has  caused  3713 
deaths  in  ten  years. 

What  will  you  say,  then,  to  the  more  frightful  fact  that 
in  the  same  time  there  have  been  6583  deaths  due  to  diph- 
theria ? 

The  sad  thing  about  the  majority  of  all  these  deaths  is 
that  they  need  not  have  been.  They  were  so  much  life 
wasted  by  carelessness.  These  are  typical  examples  of  in- 
fectious or  contagious  diseases, — diseases  the  germs  of 
which  are  carried  in  some  careless,  negligent  way  from  one 
sick  person  to  another  well  person.  Proper  foresight  and 
care  would  have  prevented  very  many,  if  not  most,  of  these 
cases  of  sickness  and  death.  When  such  diseases  appear 
in  your  family,  you  must  at  once  isolate  the  patient,  i.  e., 
prevent  visits  to  the  house,  keep  your  children  from  school, 
and  the  entire  family  from  visiting.  You  should  not  even 
use  library  books,  as  these  carry  to  the  next  borrower  the 
germs  of  the  disease.  Everything  coming  from  the  sick- 
room must  be  disinfected,  and  after  the  illness  is  past,  the 


a68  EVERYBODY'S  MEDICAL  DUTY. 

whole  room  and  contents  must  be  disinfected  according  to 
the  orders  of  the  physician  or  of  the  Board  of  Health. 

Typhoid  fever,  of  which  in  Philadelphia  6607  in  ten 
years  have  died,  is  often  communicated  by  polluted  water, 
and  yet  we  are  drinking  water  into  which  the  sewage  of 
several  hundred  thousand  people  has  been  drained.  The 
wonder  is  that  we  have  so  little  typhoid  fever  and  other 
zymotic  diseases. 

It  is  better  to  resort  to  an  adequate  source  of  water 
where  the  population  is  sparse  and  likely  to  remain  so, 
than  to  spend  vast  sums  of  money  in  removing  impurities 
by  filtration,  etc.  The  tendency  is  for  the  water  to  become 
more  and  more  impure  as  the  population  increases.  Sub- 
siding reservoirs  and  filtration-works  are  a  present  neces- 
sity, but  they  should  be  so  constructed  as  to  be  utilized 
when  the  source  of  supply  is  changed. 

All  filth  should  be  removed  as  promptly  as  possible  be- 
yond the  city  limits  without  becoming  a  nuisance  at  the 
place  of  disposal.  Sewers  should  be  reconstructed  in  ac- 
cordance with  modern  engineering  practice.  They  should 
be  self-cleansing  and  not  depositories  of  filth.  The  Schuyl- 
kill below  the  dam,  lying  between  two  populated  parts  of 
the  city,  is  the  receptacle  of  a  vast  amount  of  sewage.  For 
hours  each  day  the  sewage  is  held  back  by  the  tide,  caus- 
ing deposits  in  the  bed  of  the  river  and  foulness  of  the 
stream.  At  the  receding  tide,  deposits  take  place  on  the 
low  shores  in  the  lower  parts  of  the  city,  causing  unhealthy 
effluvia.  To  remedy  this  and  keep  the  river  pure,  all  sew- 
age now  entering  the  Schuylkill  should  be  carried  below 
the  city  and  discharged  only  at  the  ebb  of  the  tide.  Great 
sums  of  money  under  skilled  scientific  guidance  should  be 
spent  in  constructing  intercepting  sewers.  While  we  are 
thus  breeding  the  germs  of  disease  with  our  wasted  sew- 
age, the  land  is  being  exhausted  of  phosphatic  salts  and 


EVERYBODY'S  MEDICAL   DUTY.  269 

ammonia,  the  very  element  that  we  throw  away  with  sew- 
age. The  nonutilization  of  sewage  is  both  a  financial  sin 
and  a  moral  sin.  Bacteria,  which  the  Bible  calls  "  the 
armies  of  the  living  God,"  are  produced  by  the  unutilized 
sewage.  When  we  do  wrong,  God  has  a  multitude  of 
ways  of  punishing  us,  and  among  these  the  beneficent 
microorganism  is  most  powerful  and  patent. 

The  cremation  of  garbage  is  a  much-needed  sanitary  re- 
form. The  present  system  causes  great  nuisances  by  im- 
proper disposal,  and  by  collecting  swine  within  the  city 
limits. 

Intramural  interment  is  practiced  to  a  large  extent.  It 
should  be  prohibited  in  built-up  parts  of  the  city,  and  after 
a  number  of  years  an  opportunity  should  be  offered  to 
remove  the  bodies,  and  the  burial  grounds  should  be 
turned  into  parks. 

An  important  sanitary  reform  is  the  establishment  of 
mortuaries  throughout  the  city  for  the  benefit  of  the  poor 
and  others.  The  poor  keep  the  bodies  of  deceased  rela- 
tives in  their  crowded  apartments  in  the  midst  of  the  living. 
Bodies  could  be  taken  to  the  mortuaries  to  await  the  fu- 
neral service,  and  friends  could  assemble  there,  dispersing 
after  the  ceremony,  and  thus  save  the  expense  of  the  fu- 
neral procession  as  well  as  relieve  the  home  of  serious  dis- 
advantages. 

People  should  be  instructed  in  the  management  of 
infants,  especially  during  the  hot  season,  and  such  instruc- 
tion would  be  the  means  of  reducing  infant  mortality. 
Such  institutions  as  the  Children's  Country-week  and  the 
Sanitarium,  are  of  great  aid  in  this  direction.  More  than 
125,000  children  and  care-takers  visited  the  Sanitarium  in 
the  summer  of  189 1.  A  great  amount  of  sickness,  suffer- 
ing, and  death  were  doubtless  prevented  by  this  means, 
and  it  is  worthy  of  most  liberal  support. 

A  smooth,  impervious,  noiseless   pavement  is  greatly 


270  EVERYBODY'S   MEDICAL   DUTY. 

needed.  Its  advantages  would  be  cleanliness  of  surface 
and  soil,  comfort  in  riding,  and  especially  riddance  of  the 
noise-nuisance  so  wearing  on  the  nerves  of  most  people, 
and  that  beyond  question  is  lessening  the  average  duration 
of  life. 

We  have  now  thousands  of  acres  of  parks,  miles  away 
from  the  crowded  city,  parks  for  the  rich,  or  that  the  poor 
can  only  use  a  few  days  of  the  year.  What  is  sadly  needed 
is  many  small  parks  scattered  all  through  the  denser  parts 
of  the  city,  little  parks  for  the  daily  use  of  children,  and  so 
near  the  houses  of  the  poor  that  they  can  be  reached  in  a 
few  minutes. 

Rapid  transit  should  be  urged  as  an  important  sanitary 
measure.  Tired  workmen  and  women  and  children  are 
obliged  every  day  to  stand  in  crowded  cars  while  breathing 
lifeless  and  even  fetid  air.  Disease  is  constantly  being 
propagated  under  these  conditions. 

Everybody  should  protest  against  the  common,  disgust- 
ing, and  unnecessary  habit  of  spitting  in  public  places, 
public  vehicles,  rooms,  etc.  It  is  now  indubitably  estab- 
lished that  the  sputum  of  consumptives  is  a  great  means  of 
conveying  the  bacilli  to  others  ;  soon  dried,  the  dust  is 
carried  by  the  wind  or  by  the  dress-trail  to  lungs  that  are 
the  breeding-ground  it  seeks. 

Public  bath-houses  for  "  the  great  unwashed "  are 
urgently  needed.  Not  only  bathing  pools  for  use  in  the 
summer  time,  but  especially  public  bathing  establishments, 
where  the  year  round  the  poor  can  bathe  for  a  small  sum. 
I  do  not  understand  why  some  moderately  rich  man  does 
not  immortalize  himself,  and  justly,  nobly  so,  by  construct- 
ing people's  baths  after  the  models  so  successful  in  New 
York. 

There  should  be  established,  also,  public  wash-houses, 
where  for  a  moderate  sum  the  poor  can  take  their  clothes 
and  cleanse  them  by  their  own  labor  and  with  the  aid  of 


EVERYBODY'S   MEDICAL   DUTY.  271 

labor-saving  appliances.  It  encourages  cleanliness,  relieves 
the  family  of  the  disadvantages  under  which  they  labor  in 
their  crowded  houses,  etc. 

I  have  left,  for  the  sake  of  emphasis,  the  consideration  of 
tuberculosis  or  consumption.  Fix  it  in  your  memories 
that  in  Philadelphia,  in  ten  years,  27,142  people  have  died 
of  this  disease.  There  are  many  ways  in  which  the  tough 
and  prolific  germs  of  this  most  deadly  of  all  diseases  are 
conveyed  from  one  person  to  another.  There  can  be  little 
doubt  that  the  milk  from  tuberculous  cows,  or  by  its  con- 
tamination in  handling,  is  often  the  means  of  the  transfer. 
I  have  emphasized  the  milk-danger  enough.  The  meat 
from  tuberculous  animals  may  also  bring  the  contagion. 
Hence  the  urgent  necessity  of  the  thorough  cooking  of  all 
meat.  However  fashionable  it  may  be  to  eat  under-done 
meat,  do  not  you  be  thus  fashionable.  There  seems  to  be 
little  danger  of  the  transfer  of  the  bacillus  from  the  phthisi- 
cal patient  to  another  person  except  by  means  of  the 
sputum.  This  should  never  be  allowed  to  dry.  It  should 
at  once  be  disinfected  or  burned. 

But  the  preparation  of  the  soil  is  quite  as  important  as 
the  planting  of  the  seed.  There  are  probably  thousands 
of  the  bacilli  of  consumption  in  the  lungs  and  digestive 
tracts  of  each  of  us  this  minute.  We  are  breathing  and 
eating  them  every  day.  But  they  germinate,  grow,  or 
live  only  in  certain  soils ;  they  develop  only  in  the  lungs 
and  organs  of  certain  persons.  Just  why  this  is  so,  is  a 
little  hard  to  explain,  but  beyond  question,  besides  heredi- 
tary tendency  thereto,  it  is  in  great  part  due  to  undeveloped 
lungs,  insufficient  chest-exercise  and  development,  inade- 
quate oxygenization  of  the  blood.  We  cramp  our  lungs 
with  tight  clothes,  sit  too  much,  live  too  much  indoors,  and 
all  that. 

Almost  all  wild  animals  die  of  consumption  in  captivity, 
but  never  die  of  the  disease  in  their  native  habitat.     We 


272  EVERYBODY'S   MEDICAL   DUTY. 

are  all  wild  animals  in  captivity  to  civilization.  According 
to  the  researches  of  Cornet,  almost  fifty  per  cent,  of  all 
deaths  in  prisons  are  due  to  tuberculous  disease.  Outside 
of  prisons  only  about  ten  per  cent,  die  of  this  disease. 
The  inference  is  obvious.  A  famous  old  physician  never 
failed  to  cure  his  consumptive  patients  if  he  could  get  them 
to  take  his  medicine — twenty-five  miles  of  horse-back 
riding  every  day.  Consumptives  get  well  when  sent  to 
high  altitudes  or  to  mild  climates,  where  they  live  in  the 
open  air  and  where  respiration  with  chest-expansion  and 
exercise  is  inevitable.  The  lesson  is  clear :  dress  and  train 
the  young  in  more  natural  ways  of  breathing  and  living; 
let  there  be  less  schooling,  less  study,  and  less  reading, 
more  light  gymnastics,  more  open-air  life,  and  more  healthy 
animality. 

I  have  hardly  time  even  to  mention  the  evils  that  are 
due  to  ill-ventilation  of  houses,  of  sleeping-rooms,  and 
especially  of  the  theaters  and  public  halls.  I  cannot  touch 
the  evils  connected  with  street-cleaning  or  noncleaning. 
I  wish  I  might  also  pitch  into  the  shame  of  the  adultera- 
tion of  medicines — a  large  proportion  of  the  drugs  of  the 
ordinary  drug-store  being  impure.  I  am  also  prevented 
from  discussing  the  harmful  effects  on  health  and  life  of 
certain  handicrafts,  methods  of  work,  etc. ;  the  subtle  and 
injurious  effects  of  certain  trade  monopolies,  trusts,  and 
"  combines,"  in  raising  the  price  of  many  necessaries  of 
the  poor,  e.  g.,  of  McKinleyed  wool,  which  means  shoddy 
wool,  cotton  instead  of  woolen  clothing,  which  means  dis- 
ease and  increased  death-rate.  Failure  in  school  hygiene 
is  accountable  for  much  ill-health  in  after-life ;  the  selling 
of  spectacles  by  opticians  without  medical  advice  and  pre- 
scription,— a  thing  that  should  be  forbidden  by  law, — is 
doing  vast  injury  to  the  community.  And,  finally,  more 
important  than  any  of  these  things,  I  regret  being  forced 
to  omit  discussion  of  the  blood-curdling  horror  of  drink. 


EVERYBODY'S  MEDICAL  DUTY.  273 

dealing  death  everywhere,  corrupting  the  bodies,  brains, 
and  souls  of  men,  shortening  and  hardening  the  lives  of  us 
all,  whether  drinkers  or  not. 

The  death-rate  is  the  registering  index  of  the  whole 
matter,  though  figures  of  this  kind  have  to  be  used  with 
intelligence  and  judgment  in  order  not  to  tell  lies.  In  New 
York  three  persons  more  per  thousand  die  every  year  than 
just  over  the  river  in  Brooklyn.  Other  things  being  equal, 
the  greater  the  crowding,  the  greater  the  death-rate. 
Bearing  this  in  mind,  weigh  well  the  fact  that  with  all  the 
frightful  misery  and  crowding  and  squalor  to  be  found  in 
London,  a  city  of  five  million  inhabitants,  its  death-rate  is 
nevertheless  about  four  per  thousand  less  than  that  of  New 
York.  This  means  that  if  London  had  the  same  mortality 
as  New  York,  20,000  more  people  would  die  each  year  than 
do  die. 

When  we  come  to  Philadelphia,  we  at  once  find  the 
excellent  results  due  to  the  fact  that  ours  is  a  city  of  homes  ; 
the  crowd-diseases  are  lessened,  and  our  death-rate  is  four 
per  thousand  less  than  that  of  New  York.  If  our  mortal- 
ity were  the  same  rate  as  that  of  New  York,  4000  more  of 
our  citizens  would  die  each  year.  Our  elation,  however, 
gets  a  sharp  check  when  we  think  of  what  should  be,  and 
compare  our  unnecessarily  high  mortality  with  London's 
splendid  record.  With  five  millions  of  inhabitants,  instead 
of  our  one  million,  and  despite  all  the  unsanitary  disad- 
vantages, London,  by  heroic  sanitary  diligence,  has  brought 
her  death-rate  below  ours.  It  is  no  exaggeration  to  say 
that  instead  of  our  death-rate  being  20.66,  it  need  not,  in 
the  present  state  of  medical  and  sanitary  science,  be  over 
17.  This  put  in  plain  words  means  that  by  our  culpable, 
nay,  criminal,  neglect  we  are  killing,  needlessly  killing, 
something  like  three  thousand  inhabitants  of  our  city  each 
year. 

Let  us  estimate  the  financial  value  of  this  loss.  The 
24 


274  EVERYBODY'S  MEDICAL  DUTY. 

average  rate  of  American  wage-earners  is  about  one  dollar 
a  day.  This  is  a  low  estimate.  That  is,  you  can  buy  the 
labor  of  the  average  American  citizen  for  about  ^300  a 
year.  According  to  insurance  life-tables,  the  average 
length  of  our  life  is  about  forty  years.  Our  working  or 
productive  period  is  about  half  that  time,  and  the  average 
market  value  of  one  of  us  is  therefore  twenty  times  300,  or 
about  ;$6ooo.  Put  up  for  sale,  one  of  us  is  worth  ^6000 
in  the  labor  market.  Now  let  us  allow  of  the  3CXX)  killed 
by  our  own  carelessness  and  neglect,  one-third  of  the 
number  as  having  passed  the  laboring  age,  and  therefore 
to  be  thrown  out  of  this  accounting.  The  remaining  2000 
Philadelphians  sacrificed  to  short-sightedness  are  thus  seen 
to  be  worth  in  the  labor  market  ;$i2,(XX),ooo. 

But  this  is  by  no  means  all  the  loss  ;  for  every  death.  Dr. 
Farr  estimates  that  two  persons  are  on  an  average  continu- 
ously ill,  i.  e.,  there  are  two  years  of  sickness  for  every 
annual  death.  With  the  3000  needless  deaths,  therefore, 
there  are  also  in  Philadelphia  each  year  the  equivalent 
of  6000  years  of  needless  illness.  Estimated  in  money 
values,  this  means  in  lost  time  alone  ^1,800,000,  besides  the 
doctor  and  druggist  bills,  etc. 

And  yet,  when  the  city  fathers  are  asked  for  a  few 
thousand  dollars  for  meat-inspectors  and  milk-inspectors,  for 
new  and  necessary  sewers,  for  an  unpolluted  water  supply, 
or  for  other  measures  of  preventive  medicine,  the  request  is 
refused,  or  acceded  to  with  such  crippling  stinginess  as  to 
be  ludicrously  inadequate. 

Had  I  not  been  fearful  of  the  charge  of  exaggeration,  I 
might  have  said  that  if  our  present  knowledge  of  sanitation 
and  prevention  were  only  applied,  our  death-rate  might  be 
reduced  by  one-half. 

Extend  our  calculations  to  include  the  6o,ooo,cxX)  of 
people  of  the  United  States,  and  you  will  realize  that  the 
General  Government  needs  a  great  and  powerful  Department 


EVERYBODY'S   MEDICAL   DUTY.  275 

of  Public  Health,  with  a  Cabinet  Officer  at  Washington, 
and  with  power  and  appropriations  to  meet  the  exigencies 
and  dangers  to  life  and  health  of  our  people.  Such  a 
department  would  at  once  save  the  people  more  than  the 
entire  expenses  of  the  government.  Write  your  represen- 
tative to-morrow  to  help  forward  its  passage.  A  bill  to 
provide  a  department  of  this  kind  has  been  introduced.  As 
a  little  example  furnished  by  one  of  our  own  States,  Dr. 
Baker,  of  the  Michigan  State  Board  of  Health,  estimates 
that  in  his  State  his  Board  has  saved  over  100  lives  a  year 
from  small-pox,  400  lives  a  year  from  scarlet  fever,  and 
nearly  600  lives  a  year  from  diphtheria, — besides  many 
more  from  other  diseases  and  not  capable  of  accurate 
estimation. 

Are  you  shocked  that  I  should  estimate  the  value  of 
human  lives  and  suffering  in  dollars  ?  It  is  quite  as  little 
to  my  liking,  I  assure  you,  but  it  would  seem  necessary  in 
order  to  arouse  attention  to  the  truer  consideration  of  the 
inestimable  spiritual  value  of  life,  health,  and  happiness. 
By  this  means  I  only  wish  to  make  it  plain  to  the  crudest 
and  most  brutal  motive  that  preventive  medicine  "pays." 
The  splendid  wisdom  of  the  English,  displayed  in  the  con- 
tinuous decline  in  the  general  death-rate  (now  about  18 
per  thousand),  always  exactly  proportioned  to  thoroughness 
of  vaccination,  sanitation,  drainage,  pure  food  and  water- 
supply,  etc., — this  indeed  is  proof  beyond  question  that  it 
pays.  These  financially  shrewdest  of  all  men  would  not 
spend  money  like  water  for  these  things  if  the  return  in 
hard  cash  as  well  as  life  were  not  indubitably  evident. 

In  every  city  a  thousand  times  more  necessary  than  a 
City  Hall  is  an  Institute  of  Practical  Preventive  Medicine, 
an  organization  wherein  should  be  brought  to  a  focus  the 
best  science  and  the  most  devoted  zeal  to  guard  the  health 
and  physical  well-being  of  the  people,  bending  every  energy 
to  stamp  out  zymotic  and  unnecessary  disease,  to  alleviate 


276  EVERYBODY'S   MEDICAL   DUTY. 

and  render  less  tragic  unavoidable  suffering,  to  brighten 
and  beautify  and  lengthen  the  lives  of  all.  Since  pity  and 
religion  awakened  in  men's  mind,  the  aim  has  been  to 
relieve  the  existing  and  produced  evil,  but  science  and  intel- 
lectual prudence  now  dictate  that  we  stop  evil  causes, 
forefend  bad  results,  and  strike  at  the  sources  of  ill.  If 
Christ,  who  according  to  the  Gospel  healed  the  sick  and 
brought  the  dead  to  life,  should  come  among  us  to-day,  he 
would  be  an  exhorter  and  helper  in  the  work  of  preventive 
medicine.  To  prevent  a  death  is  just  as  great  a  work  as 
to  bring  the  dead  to  life ;  to  prevent  sickness  even  greater 
than  to  cure  it.  Civilization  demands  of  us  prevention  of 
evil  by  all  the  methods  of  social  cooperation,  scientific  pre- 
cision and  prevision.  If  you  do  not  take  a  living  interest 
in  these  things  you  are  no  Christian,  you  do  not  love  your 
fellow-men  and  the  coming  generation.  The  religion  of 
civilization  must  add  intellect  to  sympathy.  Science  is  not 
antagonistic  to  religion,  it  gives  it  eyes  and  hands  and 
machinery,  whereby  to  realize  its  desires.  True  pity,  intel- 
ligent pity,  means  prevention.  Up  to  now  the  physician's 
work  has  been  to  cure  sick  persons,  but  from  now  on  our 
greater  and  sublimer  task  is  to  prevent  sickness.  In  this 
you  and  I  must  aid.     This  is  "  everybody's  medical  duty." 


THE  POWER  OF  WILL  IN  DISEASE.* 

After  a  hundred  years  of  history  and  education  in  scien- 
tific medicine,  and  in  a  country  where  shrewd  common 
sense  has  been  developed  in  the  most  backward-looking 
mind — at  such  time  and  under  such  circumstances  it  would 
have  seemed  impossible  that  the  incurably  sick,  the  par- 
alyzed, and  the  maimed  should  by  thousands  flock  to  a 
priest  to  be  cured  of  their  diseases.  The  newspapers  say 
the  immense  depot  at  Pittsburg  has  of  late  seemed  like  a 
hospital,  filled  as  it  has  been  with  the  poor,  unfortunate  in- 
valids seeking  Father  Mollinger's  supernatural  aid  to  make 
them  well.  The  Father  anoints  and  blesses,  and  the  young 
man  who  "  had  not  walked  since  childhood  "  upon  com- 
mand goes  unassisted  "  from  the  altar-rail  to  the  rear  of  the 
church,  to  the  amazement  of  the  vast  audience."  Though 
the  report  says  the  great  majority  are  sadly  disappointed — 
the  squarely  impossible  cannot  be  done  in  these  times 
— a  number  are  found  that,  with  functional  affections,  under 
strong  emotion,  exhibit  a  change,  or  an  increase  of 
strength,  so  that  the  belief  in  "  the  power  "  is  kept  living. 

What  is  it  that  makes  Father  Mollinger,  Christian 
science,  faith  cure,  medical  spiritualism,  and  to  some  ex- 
tent homeopathy  possible  in  the  nineteenth  century  ? 
Were  there  absolutely  no  element  of  truth  in  these  re- 
ported "  cures,"  even  the  dullest  dupe  would  come  at  last  to 
some  consciousness  of  the  hocus-pocus.  The  manure  of  the 
soil  nourishing  these  delusions  is  a  truth  too  often  ignored 
and  neglected  by  scientific  medicine.      It  is  the  truth  of 

*  From  the  Aledical  News,  June  27,  1891. 
277 


278  THE   POWER   OF   WILL  IN   DISEASE. 

the  power  of  the  emotions,  of  the  will — of  the  spirit,  if 
you  please — over  the  flesh  ;  of  life  over  the  beginnings  of 
disease,  and  even  over  disease  and  death  itself.  Races  and 
nations  differ  greatly  in  their  power  of  resisting  and  over- 
coming disease,  simply  by  reason  of  the  characteristic 
attitude  of  the  will  and  the  disposition  of  the  patient  to- 
ward the  physical  illness.  Just  so  do  all,  even  brothers, 
differ  in  the  same  way.  Thousands  are  physically  sick 
because  mental  resolution  and  spiritual  domination  is  weak 
and  illogical.  This  is  strikingly  true  in  reference  to  the 
beginnings  of  disease.  The  secret  of  continuous  good 
health  does  not  always  consist  merely  in  physical  resist- 
ance or  robustness,  but  in  sharply  conquering  the  subtle 
beginnings  of  corporeal  abnormality  by  pure  will-power. 
There  are  two  homologues  of  this  power  that  illustrate  it 
exactly.  Who  has  not  seen  whimsicality,  crankiness,  and 
oddity  by  self-indulgence  slowly  degenerate  into  mono- 
mania, and  even  into  downright  insanity  ?  And,  again,  who 
can  doubt  that  in  the  commencement  many  such  persons 
are  perfectly  conscious  of  the  abnormal  tendency,  and  are, 
moreover,  perfectly  capable  of  not  doing  the  ridiculous  or 
self-forgetful  things.  They  are  at  first  driven  by  no  impe- 
rious necessity.  It  is  precisely  so  when  one  gives  way  to 
immoral  courses  of  life.  At  first  the  voice  of  conscience 
is  clear ;  by  and  by  control  is  lost  and  the  voice  is  entirely 
silent.  The  analogies  obtain  in  the  matter  of  health.  The 
adage,  "  Resist  the  beginnings  of  evil,"  holds  also  here. 
All  disease  begins  subtly,  almost  insensibly,  as  chill,  lassi- 
tude, malaise,  etc.  Caught  at  this  stage  and  fought  down 
by  a  virile  volition,  that  which  by  self-indulgence  would 
have  proceeded  to  genuine  fever  and  illness  may  often  be 
resolved  into  routine  normality  of  health.  A  brisk  walk 
of  five  miles  in  the  teeth  of  exhaustion  and  weariness  has 
saved  many  from  severe  illness.  And  so  in  types  of  dis- 
ease that  are,  if  one  may  so  speak,  more  organic.     The 


THE   POWER   OF   WILL   IN   DISEASE.  279 

fact  cannot  be  disputed  that  many  who  have  believed  them- 
selves incapable  of  walking,  under  powerful  emotion,  their 
own  will  being  supplemented  and  "  relayed  "  by  that  of 
another,  do  really  find  that  they  can  walk  a  little.  Our 
confutation  of  the  priest's  supernaturalism  consists  pre- 
cisely in  this  proved  power  of  the  will.  Doubtless  ortho- 
pedic appliances  are  often  given  patients  who  need  only 
resolution,  encouragement,  and  repeated  trial  in  order  to 
develop  by  exercise  the  strength  that  the  crutch  really 
conceals  or  neutralizes.  In  the  sick-room  every  experi- 
enced physician  knows  how  much  depends  upon  the 
morale,  the  resolution  of  the  patient,  and  how  even  death 
and  life  may  depend  upon  the  will.  All  this,  when  we  read 
it,  seems  trite  enough,  but  its  significance  is  lost  sight  of  in 
the  battle  of  rival  theories  of  disease,  and  to  some  it  must 
seem  the  froth  of  nonsense.  But  the  practical  lesson  of 
the  very  obvious  truth  consists  in  the  simple  duty  of 
arousing  the  will  to  self-confidence  and  corporeal  domina- 
tion. As  has  been  well  demonstrated,  the  best  cure  for  the 
most  outrageous  hysteria  is  mental  and  volitional  control 
— supplanting  the  patient's  diseased  imagination  by  a 
healthy  one — true  faith-cure  in  a  legitimate  and  genuine 
sense.  The  puppets  of  fashionable  automatonism  are 
prone  to  run  to  the  doctor  for  every  ache,  real  or  sus- 
pected. To  indulge  them  in  their  folly  sometimes  seems 
to  the  physician  not  without  a  certain  worldly  excuse. 
But  if  a  higher  ethical  ruling  is  adhered  to,  duty  will 
counsel  encouragement  of  prophylaxis  and  hygiene ;  and 
among  the  means  of  forefending  disease  an  energetic 
domination  of  will  over  the  body  is  often  the  most  vital 
and  important. 


THE  APOTHEOSIS  OF  HYSTERIA  AND 
WHIMSICALITY.* 

One  of  the  functions  of  a  medical  journal  is  to  notify  its 
readers  of  the  appearance  of  new  and  important  medical 
works,  and  so  deeply  are  we  impressed  with  the  transcend- 
ent importance  of  one  such  book  recently  issued,  that  we 
believe  we  are  doing  a  great  service  to  medicine  by  a  some- 
what extended  and  free  advertisement  of  it.  It  is  by  W,  A. 
Dewey,  M.D.,  a  late  professor  of  materia  medica,  an  editor 
and  associate  editor  of  numerous  medical  journals,  an  author 
and  associate  author  of  several  medical  works,  a  member  of 
many  medical  societies.  The  last  title  the  learned  author 
gives  himself  on  the  title-page  of  his  book  is  simply  this : 
"  Homoeopathic,  etc.,  etc.," — which  reminds  one  of  a  drug 
catalogued  by  the  New  York  homeopathic  druggist,  Swan, 
as  "  Omnia."  The  book  to  which  we  call  especial  atten- 
tion is  entitled:  "  Essentials  of  Homoeopathic  Therapeutics, 
being  a  Quiz  Compend  upon  the  Application  of  Homoe- 
opathic Remedies  to  Diseased  States,"  and  is  published  by 
Boericke  &  Tafel,  Philadelphia,  1895. 

"One  of  the  grand  cardinal  features  of  homoeopathy," 
says  the  author  in  his  preface,  "and  one  little  understood 
by  the  allopathic  school,  is  the  fact  that  any  drug  in  the 
entire  homoeopathic  materia  medica  may  be  a  remedy  in 
any  diseased  state.  It  is,  therefore,  evident  that  the  prepa- 
ration of  this  work  entailed  no  little  difficulty,"  etc.  In 
view  of  the  infinite  multiplication  of"  remedies,"  and  of  the 
numerous  different  "  potentizations  "  of  each,  together  with 

*  The  Medical  News,  March  9,  1895. 
280 


APOTHEOSIS  OF  HYSTERIA  AND  WHIMSICALITY.       281 

the  literally  bewildering  multiplication  of  "  symptoms  "  or 
"  provings,"  this  modest  qualifying  reservation  is  very  ap- 
propriate, as  otherwise  all  the  books  that  have  ever  been 
printed  could  not  contain  the  possible  "  Application  of 
Homoeopathic  Remedies  to  Diseased  States." 

Before  passing  to  the  subject-matter  of  the  volume  we 
cannot  forbear  a  word  of  criticism  as  to  the  strange  fatality 
that  makes  it  impossible  for  our  homeopathic  friends  to 
write  sentences  according  to  the  fundamental  rules  of 
English  grammar.  In  reading  this  remarkable  work,  for 
example,  we  seem  to  hear  the  echoes  of  some  half-forgotten 
patois  in  which  philologic  crudities,  barbarisms,  and  gram- 
matic  impossibilities  vie  in  vain  with  pseudoscientific 
whimsicalities  and  medievalisms.  The  very  contractions 
used  of  the  names  of  drugs  make  one  smile,  as,  e.g.,  croton 
tig.,  carbo  veg,,  Lye,  carbo  an..  Kali  bich.,  etc.  How  can 
one  who  knows  that  the  word  blepharospasm  itself  means 
twitching  of  the  lids  speak  of  "  a  blepharospasmus  twitching 
of  the  eyelids  "  ?  To  one  not  conversant  with  occultism, 
the  works  of  Mme.  Blavatsky,  or  the  strange  use  of  lan- 
guage by  the  homeopaths,  a  large  number  of  the  sentences 
♦  are  absolutely  devoid  of  meaning.  One  wonders  how 
symptoms  can  be  called  "  female  symptoms  "  or  "  male 
symptoms,"  what  sentences  without  verbs  can  signify,  what 
the  personification  of  drugs  betokens,  etc.  Of  these  gram- 
matic  peculiarities,  of  which  certainly  every  second  sentence 
is  an  illustration,  we  quote  a  few  examples  that  have 
attracted  the  attention  : — 

The  sensations  are  throbbing,  which  is  intense  and  sudden, 
and  the  pains  are  apt  to  cease  as  suddenly  as  they  appeared. 

Stramonium  has  visions  of  animals  coming  toward  him  from 
every  corner. 

It  is  a  hoarse,  croupy  cough,  but  withal  a  loose  edge. 

The  patient  clutches  the  air ;  sometimes  a  stupor,  which,  if 
aroused  out  of,  they  strike  people. 


282      APOTHEOSIS  OF  HYSTERIA  AND  WHIMSICALITY. 

The  child  appears  to  have  but  one  bowel  extending  from 
mouth  to  anus. 

The  diarrhea  of  Thuja  is  a  chronic  diarrhea  traceable  to  vacci- 
jnation,  forcibly  expelled  like  water  from  a  bunghole. 

What  drug  has  nausea  at  the  thought  of  food?  even  mention 
food  and  he  vomits. 

Gulping  up  of  burning  water. 

The  patient  is  excitable,  restless,  and  fidgety.  They  are  awk- 
ward and  clumsy. 

Where  does  Kali  bich.  come  in  ? 

What  drug  has  a  great  deal  of  depression  about  his  chest,  is 
tearful  and  discouraged,  and  fears  that  he  will  go  into  decline? 

Patient  thinks  she  will  go  crazy,  is  suspicious,  has  visions  of 
rats,  etc.  ;  is  conscious,  but  can't  help  it. 

Stannura  has  characteristically  falling  of  the  womb  during  hard 
stools. 

In  glancing  through  this  volume  one  is  struck  by  the 
almost  maniacal  reveling  in  the  nasty.  Every  possible 
discharge  or  excretory  product  of  the  body  (our  author 
would  call  it  "  a  secretion  from  the  body  ")  is  described, 
with  a  vividness  of  language  and  with  a  fond  enumeration 
of  the  morbid  varieties  and  of  their  unexampled  filthiness  ; ' 
the  catalogues  of  Rabelais  pale  before  the  telling  word- 
pictures  of  our  author.  This  is  undoubtedly  due  to  the 
habit  of  treating  symptoms  rather  than  to  a  distinctly 
Rabelaisian  type  of  mind,  however.  This  fact  may  also 
explain  why  spermatorrhea  has  the  consideration  of  nearly 
three  pages,  whilst  peritonitis  has  but  half  a  page ;  why 
diseases  of  women  require  nine  pages,  whilst  tuberculosis 
and  "  phthisis  "  combined  require  but  three. 

But  this  enumeration  of  symptoms — what  awful  absence 
of  the  sense  of  humor  does  it  show,  the  perfect  solemnity 
with  which  this  apotheosis  of  hysteria  is  set  down !  A 
person,  we  suppose,  has  taken  an  infinitesimal  amount  of 
"  carbo  veg.,"  and  whatever  morbid  whims  pass  through 


APOTHEOSIS  OF  HYSTERIA  AND  WHIMSICALITY.       283 

his  fancy  for  days  are  supposed  to  be  "  provings  "  of  the 
drug,  although  any  amount  of  carbo  veg.  in  the  shape  of 
toasted  bread  may  be  eaten  at  other  times. 

Thus  ^^  phosphorus  has  evening  hoarseness,  while  Causti- 
cum  has  morning  hoarseness,"  ''  lilium  is  worse  in  the  after- 
noon, sepia  in  the  forenoon."  One  drug  produces  a  sensa- 
tion in  the  right  arm,  another  in  the  left  arm.  One  pro- 
duces headache  over  only  the  left  eye,  or  pain  in  the  left 
ovary,  headache  upon  one  side  of  the  head  ("  the  pains 
following  the  course  of  the  sun  "),  etc. 

The  explanation  of  a  number  of  national  traits  is  sug- 
gested by  the  assurance  that  among  the  mental  symptoms 
of  gelsemium  is  mentioned,  "  does  not  seem  to  care  whether 
school  keeps  or  not ;  "  among  those  of  Platina,  "  the  patient 
is  proud  and  haughty  ;  looks  down  upon  everybody  with 
disdain  ;  everybody  seems  beneath  her  ;  "  among  those  of 
Baptisia,  "  he  thinks  he  is  scattered  about,  and  he  must 
move  to  get  his  pieces  together  again ;  "  in  children  cha- 
momilla  produces  the  very  human  trait :  "  want  to  be 
carried  about,  and  want  different  things,  and  when  they  get 
them  throw  them  away  dissatisfied."  Our  neighbors,  the 
Britishers,  have  often  wondered  why  we  Americans  "  like 
to  sit  with  the  feet  on  the  table."  They  may  now  under- 
stand that  it  is  due  to  "  the  effect  of  carbo  veg.  on  the  liver." 
Profanity,  it  would  logically  seem,  might  be  lessened  by 
restricting  the  sale  of  nitric  acid. 

In  private  practice  we  have  often  been  told  by  patients 
that  they  had  been  given  medicines  for  cataract  for  years 
by  homeopathic  practicers,  and  lo !  here.  Anno  Domini 
1895,  is  phosphorus  commended  therefor! 

It  is  little  wonder  that  the  animosity  against  the  "  allo- 
path "  is  so  great  that  a  drug  having  a  general  exorcising 
or  purifying  effect  is  recommended  as  "  the  first  remedy  to 
use  if  the  case  comes  from  allopathic  hands." 

Quotation  is  better  and  more  just  to  the  talented  author 


386      APOTHEOSIS  OF  HYSTERIA  AND  WHIMSICALITY. 

What  is  the  Graphites  temperament  in  general  ?  Sad,  fat,  fair, 
and  constipated. 

What  drug  has  the  symptom  that  the  soul  feels  as  though  it 
were  freed  from  the  body? 

What  drug  has  special  action  on  the  right  wrist  ? 

The  Natrum  curb,  patient  gets  very  nervous  during  thunder 
storms  and  hides  in  the  cellar.  This  nervousness  is  said  to  be 
due  to  the  electrical  condition  of  the  atmosphere  acting  on  such 
patients. 

Pulsatilla  is  mild,  tearful,  and  whimsical.  Sepia  is  depressed, 
easily  excited,  and  irritable.  Pulsatilla — blondes.  Sepia — bru- 
nettes. 

Medicine  is  a  serious  study  and  the  medical  life  is  pro- 
verbially a  solemn  one.  Perhaps  we  have  quoted  too  ex- 
tensively from  our  valued  author,  but  his  teachings  we  trust 
may  be  found  at  least  temporarily  a  good  "  regular  "  dose 
antidotal  of  the  gloominess  of  our  calling.  The  richest  and 
most  perfect  humor  in  the  world  is  the  unconscious  variety, 
that  wherein  the  most  profoundly  earnest  joker  dreams 
least  of  all  things  that  he  is  producing  a  work  that  will  in- 
spire most  uproarious  laughter  in  thousands  of  readers. 

But  after  the  laugh  the  return  to  work  !  After  the  fun 
the  payment  of  the  bills !  Thereupon  come  the  indigna- 
tion and  the  disgust — the  thought  that  it  is  for  the  encour- 
agement of  this  sort  of  nauseating  drivel  that  our  aristocratic 
society  gives  "charity  balls;"  for  this  that  our  legislators 
vote  hundreds  of  thousands  of  dollars  of  the  people's 
money ;  this  gibbering  ghost  of  medieval  medicine  it  is  that 
an  intelligent  and  discriminating  people  call  the  "  new 
school " ! 


CHARACTER* 

In  a  general  way,  it  is  doubtless  true  that  the  great 
mistake  of  men,  of  all  men,  consists  in  the  failure  to 
estimate  the  value  of  character.  Everybody  is  prone  to 
put  the  good  of  life  in  something  gained  or  done,  in 
knowledge,  in  some  objective  thing,  as  wealth,  power  over 
men,  ability  to  make  much  of  self,  etc.  But  apart  from 
this  general  injudiciousness  of  mankind  there  are  certain 
ages  or  peoples  which  thus  err  especially  and  grievously. 
It  is  an  error,  for  example,  markedly  common  in  a  young 
nation  or  people,  when  great  public  works  are  to  be  carried 
through  and  tremendous  energy  is  to  be  put  forth  or 
utilized.  The  man  who  can  win  battles,  who  can  plan  and 
build  a  railroad,  who  can  procure  needed  legislation, 
organize  and  manage  manufactories,  he  is  the  man  people 
want,  and  they  care  little  or  not  at  all  whether  he  be 
honest,  pure,  high-minded,  unselfish,  or  whether  he  be  the 
reverse  of  these  things. 

By  and  by,  however,  with  a  better  civilization,  there 
comes  the  knowledge,  gained  by  bitter  experience,  that 
the  emotional  and  moral  make-up  of  a  man,  his  character, 
as  contradistinguished  from  his  ability  to  do  things,  have 
as  much,  or  more,  to  do  with  our  trust  of  him,  with  his 
"  success"  even,  as  his  ability  to  do  things.  As  more  and 
more  men  compete  for  the  same  office  or  work  to  do,  it 
is  found  that  the  larger  type  of  personality,  the  man  who 
has  character  as  well  as  ability,  is  the  better  man  to  endow 
with  trust  and  power. 

*  From  the  Medical  News,  December  I,  1894. 
287 


286      APOTHEOSIS  OF  HYSTERIA  AND  WHIMSICALITY. 

What  is  the  Graphites  temperament  in  general  ?  Sad,  fat,  fair, 
and  constipated. 

What  drug  has  the  symptom  that  the  soul  feels  as  though  it 
were  freed  from  the  body  ? 

What  drug  has  special  action  on  the  right  wrist  ? 

The  Natrum  carb.  patient  gets  very  nervous  during  thunder 
storms  and  hides  in  the  cellar.  This  nervousness  is  said  to  be 
due  to  the  electrical  condition  of  the  atmosphere  acting  on  such 
patients. 

Pulsatilla  is  mild,  tearful,  and  whimsical.  Sepia  is  depressed, 
easily  excited,  and  irritable.  Pulsatilla — blondes.  Sepia — bru- 
nettes. 

Medicine  is  a  serious  study  and  the  medical  life  is  pro- 
verbially a  solemn  one.  Perhaps  we  have  quoted  too  ex- 
tensively from  our  valued  author,  but  his  teachings  we  trust 
may  be  found  at  least  temporarily  a  good  "regular"  dose 
antidotal  of  the  gloominess  of  our  calling.  The  richest  and 
most  perfect  humor  in  the  world  is  the  unconscious  variety, 
that  wherein  the  most  profoundly  earnest  joker  dreams 
least  of  all  things  that  he  is  producing  a  work  that  will  in- 
spire most  uproarious  laughter  in  thousands  of  readers. 

But  after  the  laugh  the  return  to  work!  After  the  fun 
the  payment  of  the  bills  I  Thereupon  come  the  indigna- 
tion and  the  disgust — the  thought  that  it  is  for  the  encour- 
agement of  this  sort  of  nauseating  drivel  that  our  aristocratic 
society  gives  "charity  balls;"  for  this  that  our  legislators 
vote  hundreds  of  thousands  of  dollars  of  the  people's 
money;  this  gibbering  ghost  of  medieval  medicine  it  is  that 
an  intelligent  and  discriminating  people  call  the  "  new 
school"! 


CHARACTER* 

In  a  general  way,  it  is  doubtless  true  that  the  great 
mistake  of  men,  of  all  men,  consists  in  the  failure  to 
estimate  the  value  of  character.  Everybody  is  prone  to 
put  the  good  of  life  in  something  gained  or  done,  in 
knowledge,  in  some  objective  thing,  as  wealth,  power  over 
men,  ability  to  make  much  of  self,  etc.  But  apart  from 
this  general  injudiciousness  of  mankind  there  are  certain 
ages  or  peoples  which  thus  err  especially  and  grievously. 
It  is  an  error,  for  example,  markedly  common  in  a  young 
nation  or  people,  when  great  public  works  are  to  be  carried 
through  and  tremendous  energy  is  to  be  put  forth  or 
utilized.  The  man  who  can  win  battles,  who  can  plan  and 
build  a  railroad,  who  can  procure  needed  legislation, 
organize  and  manage  manufactories,  he  is  the  man  people 
want,  and  they  care  little  or  not  at  all  whether  he  be 
honest,  pure,  high-minded,  unselfish,  or  whether  he  be  the 
reverse  of  these  things. 

By  and  by,  however,  with  a  better  civilization,  there 
comes  the  knowledge,  gained  by  bitter  experience,  that 
the  emotional  and  moral  make-up  of  a  man,  his  character, 
as  contradistinguished  from  his  ability  to  do  things,  have 
as  much,  or  more,  to  do  with  our  trust  of  him,  with  his 
"success"  even,  as  his  ability  to  do  things.  As  more  and 
more  men  compete  for  the  same  office  or  work  to  do,  it 
is  found  that  the  larger  type  of  personality,  the  man  who 
has  character  as  well  as  ability,  is  the  better  man  to  endow 
with  trust  and  power. 

*  From  the  Medical  News,  December  I,  1894. 
287 


a88  CHARACTER. 

It  is  just  in  such  a  condition  that  we  Americans  now 
find  ourselves.  We  have  heretofore  been  content  to  give 
over  our  cities,  States,  manufactories,  banks,  and  institu- 
tions of  a  thousand  kinds  to  the  persons  who  by  hook  or 
crook  could  get  hold  of  them,  or  who  could  do  the  work 
required.  Now  at  last  we  are  finding  out  that  upon  the 
quality  of  a  man's  personal  character,  in  a  word,  upon  his 
morality,  will  depend  the  success  or  failure  of  the  thing 
done,  quite  as  much  as  or  even  more  than  upon  executive 
ability,  knowledge,  or  will-power.  It  is  not  the  most  expert 
bookkeeper  or  cashier  that  is  the  best  one  to  put  in  charge 
of  millions  of  dollars,  but  it  is  the  most  loyal  and  honest. 
It  is  not  the  best,  most  successful  administrative  ability 
that  now  makes  the  best  administrator.  In  every  walk  of 
life,  from  governing  the  nation,  the  city,  or  the  push-cart, 
we  are  daily  admonished  that  the  perfection  of  a  man's 
work  depends  upon  the  honor  and  honesty  of  the  man's 
character.  The  power  of  the  mere  doer,  the  knowledge 
of  the  knower,  the  skill  of  the  executor,  are  growing  less 
important,  and  are  coming  more  and  more  to  depend  upon 
how  the  thing  is  done,  upon  honor  and  conscience  in  the 
doer.  In  the  long  run  nowadays  the  man,  honest  but 
stupid,  if  we  must  drive  the  comparison  to  its  rather  absurd 
extreme,  gains  upon  the  brilliant  scoundrel.  But  as  almost 
no  American  can  be  called  stupid,  so  it  follows  that  the 
combination  of  conscience  with  ability  now  constitutes  the 
highest  type  of  man. 

These  rather  trite  truths  have  their  apt  and  striking 
application  to  medicine — but  with  the  proviso  that  we  are 
hardly  yet  beyond  the  first  stage  of  the  evolutionary  pro- 
cess. We  have  hardly  begun  to  be  more  than  half-con- 
scious of  our  barbarism  of  caring  nothing  for  a  physician's 
character,  providing  he  is  said  to  cure  disease,  or  wins 
"  success."  The  consequence  is'  that  we  have  plenty  of 
medical  Tweeds  and  Tammanies,  our  thousandfold  quack- 


CHARACTER.  289 

eries,  etc.,  all  dependent  upon  the  custom  of  not  consider- 
ing a  man's  character,  but  only  considering  his  ability  to 
get  official  position,  or  a  big  practice,  to  write  a  book,  to 
deliver  lectures,  to  attract  the  public  eye,  etc. 

Now  we  contend  that  it  is  high  time  that  we  undertake 
the  real  work  of  genuine  medical  civilization.  Sincerity 
and  honor  are  as  much  needed  to  make  a  good  physician 
as  trickiness  and  smartness.  The  smart  man,  who  is  also 
a  trickster,  however  infernally  smart  he  may  be,  is  hence- 
forth to  be  more  and  more  avoided.  Whatever  he  says 
or  does  he  is  only  after  self,  and  medicine  is  his  ladder 
and  tool.  The  man  whose  laboratory-experiments  are 
untrustworthy,  who  is  always  appearing  in  the  daily  papers 
under  some  pretext  or  other,  whose  language  is  habitually 
a  nasty  mixture  of  slang,  oaths,  or  vulgarity,  whose  private 
life  is  filled  with  trickery  and  politics — such  a  man,  how- 
ever "  sharp  "  and  "  able,"  is  no  longer  fit  to  be  a  teacher 
of  young  men  ;  patients  should  not  be  sent  him,  and  office 
should  not  be  given  him.  A  man  who  makes,  derives  pro- 
fit from,  or  indorses  secret  preparations  should  be  practi- 
cally disowned  by  his  fellows  in  all  ways  by  limiting  his 
power.  A  man  who  fleeces  the  public,  and  thus  injures 
the  reputation  of  the  profession  by  charging  fees  farcically 
outrageous  for  inconsiderable  operations  needs  to  be 
incontinently  squelched.  The  man  "  with  a  pull,"  who 
hoggishly  gobbles  up  and  uses  for  selfish  purposes  dozens 
of  hospital-positions,  excluding  other  quiet,  modest  men 
of  equal  ability,  nay,  even  holding  them  in  menial  subser- 
viency— such  men  should  be  avoided  by  trustees  and  other 
dispensers  of  power.  The  ringsters  who  unite  into  a  clique 
for  mutual  advantage  and  profit  by  all  the  scheming  and 
politically  vile  means  in  their  power — they  also  need  dis- 
gracing. The  huckster,  the  schemer,  the  politician  (usually 
he  is  one  person),  is  to-day  the  worst  enemy  of  medicine. 
25 


290  CHARACTER. 

He  corrupts  at  the  source ;  he  is  the  big  quack  in  the  better 
disguise. 

In  many  ways  we  need  to  begin  the  task  of  discrimina- 
tion and  of  rewarding  men  of  modesty,  honor,  gentleman- 
Hness,  and  conscience,  instead  of  neglecting  them  and  fill- 
ing positions  with  the  schemers,  the  self-puffers,  the  news- 
paper-doctors, and  all  the  "  pushers  "  who  use  medicine  as 
a  mere  tool  to  further  self.  This  is  because  the  method  of 
learning  a  diagnosis,  or  of  treating  a  patient,  or  of  doing 
anything,  is  often  as  important  as  the  thing  itself,  and  is 
indispensable  to  correct  results.  The  best  therapeutist,  the 
best  curer  of  disease,  is  not  he  who  only  knows  best,  but 
he  who  is  most  conscientious,  sympathetic,  and  self-forget- 
ful ;  the  best  surgeon  is  not  the  most  expert  operator,  but 
he  who  will  not  operate  when  operation  is  not  necessary. 
The  most  successful  physician  is  not  he  who  has  most 
patients  and  makes  the  most  money,  but  he  who  most  suc- 
cessfully cures  disease.  The  best  teacher  is  not  necessa- 
rily he  who  talks  the  glibbest  or  who  is  the  most  "  popular," 
but  he  who  helps  his  pupils  to  learn  the  best  and  most 
accurate  knowledge,  and  who  inspires  them  with  the  enthu- 
siasm for  knowledge  and  for  the  relief  of  human  ills. 

Are  you  a  trustee  or  a  dispenser  of  office  or  of  power  of 
any  kind?  There  are  hundreds  of  self-respecting,  earnest, 
capable,  honest,  quiet  men  who  deserve  your  consideration, 
and  who  will  fill  the  position  you  have  to  give  far  better, 
more  to  the  honor  of  the  profession,  more  to  the  good  of 
humanity,  than  the  "  hustler,"  the  famous  infamous  fellow 
who  fills  your  mail  with  splendid  testimonials  of  his  attain- 
ments and  capacity,  and  who  cronies  with  newspaper- 
reporters,  "  works  the  club-racket,"  and  is  as  careless  of 
medical  ethics  as  he  is  careful  of  self-advancement. 

If  you  are  no  appointment-giver  you  at  times  require  a 
consultant.      Do  you    believe   you    or   your  patient  will 


CHARACTER.  291 

secure  better  advice  from  the  business-doctor,  the  con- 
sultation-hunter, the  man  with  much  fame,  savory  or 
unsavory  ?  Or,  is  it  not  more  Hkely  you  will  do  better  by 
consulting  with  one  who  studies  deeply,  who  is  most 
scrutinizing,  accurate, — in  other  words,  whose  acts  and  life 
bespeak  intelligent  conscience  as  the  ruling  characteristic, 
and  not  egotism,  "  business,"  or  love  of  fame.  At  least, 
you  are  a  member  of  some  medical  society.  Can  you  not 
help  to  refuse  office  to  the  office-seeker  and  the  politician  ? 
Can  you  not  detect  and  estop  the  ringsters  when  they  try 
to  refuse  membership  to  the  worthy,  and  when  they  try 
to  "run  in"  the  unworthy?  Blackballing  the  good  man, 
receiving  the  bad  man,  are  too  common  as  they  are  too 
frightful  mistakes. 

In  no  way  can  we  mold  the  future  and  make  the  world 
better  for  our  children,  freer  from  disease,  than  to  encourage 
the  formation  of  noble  medical  character  by  helping  to 
office  and  by  rewarding  and  consulting  with  those  who  are 
seeking  to  keep  their  characters  pure  and  clean.  In  no 
way  are  we  more  recreant  to  our  trust  than  by  giving 
attention  to  the  advertiser,  by  helping  a  despicable  char- 
acter to  power  simply  because  he  has  enormous  effiontery 
and  egotism  coupled  with  more  or  less  of  flashy  superficial 
medical  knowledge  and  fame. 


THE  MODERN  FRANKENSTEIN.* 

Some  time  ago  I  was  present  at  a  lecture  wherein  the 
speaker,  in  alluding  to  a  certain  skull,  incidentally  spoke 
of  it  as  belonging  to  "  the  criminal  type  of  crania."  A 
brain  that  had  been  hardened  either  by  world-wear,  by 
chemical  action,  or  by  the  lecturer's  logic,  was  also  alluded 
to  as  belonging  to  "  the  crime-class,"  There  was  in  all 
this  a  sort  of  "  taken-for-granted  "  air  of  assurance  that 
aroused  in  me  a  multitude  of  questionings  and  doubts. 
The  gentleman  was  an  adept,  I,  a  novice,  and  I  felt  I  ought 
also  to  adopt  the  "  already  settled,"  "  it-goes-without- 
saying  "  air  with  which  he  calmly  put  aside  what  I  had 
supposed  the  inexorable  laws  of  nature  and  of  sociologic 
evolution.  Have  we  indeed  "  changed  all  that,"  I  said  to 
myself, — and  I  went  home  seriously  to  ask  myself  when  a 
man  becomes  an  embezzler  or  "  boodler,"  kills  his  mistress, 
guzzles  too  much  whisky,  gets  cranky  or  clean  daft,  or 
kicks  his  wife,  if  it  is  all  because  his  "  atypical  "  skull  or 
brain  determined  his  atypical  conduct.  It  is,  indeed,  true 
that  we  must  always  hold  ourselves  ready  to  reconsider 
the  truth  of  such  old  bits  of  bigotry  and  dogmatism  as 
that  two  and  two  make  four,  or  that  it  is  advisable  for  most 
of  us  to  take  food  in  order  to  live  very  long.  In  this 
modest  and  submissive  mood  I  asked  for  instruction.  I 
read  without  prejudice  whatever  I  could  find  on  the  ques- 
tion by  alienists,  neurologists,  cerebrologists,  craniologists, 
and  penologists,  and  I  regret  to  say  that  I  have  found  in 

♦Read  before  the  Medical  Jurisprudence  Society  of  Philadelphia,  May  14, 
1889.     Published  in  the  Open  Court,  1889. 

292 


THE  MODERN   FRANKENSTEIN.  293 

my  reading  that  the  medical  profession  is  pretty  generally 
leaning  toward  the  view  that  not  only  insanity  but  also 
crime  is  the  result  of  disease.  All  through  this  literature 
I  have  found  the  terms,  "  Homicidal  Mania,"  "  Moral  In- 
sanity," "  Inheritance  of  Criminality,"  "  Insane  Criminals," 
"  Moral  Anesthesia,"  "  Negro,  Simian,  and  Fetal  Peculi- 
arities," etc.,  etc. 

One  writer  says  that  "  inebriates  are  grown  and  manu- 
factured, as  much  so  as  cotton  and  wool,  and  the  machines 
to  work  them  into  fabrics  ; "  another  says,  "  the  true  thief 
is  born,  not  made."  "  The  passion  for  gambling  may  be 
acquired  by  the  fetus  in  utero "  is  another  dictum  of  a 
famous  writer.  "  The  brains  of  criminals  exhibit  a  devia- 
tion from  the  normal  type,  and  criminals  are  to  be  viewed  as 
an  anthropological  variety  of  their  species,"  says  Benedikt, 
the  Moses  of  this  "  peculiar  people."  The  popular  plebifi- 
cations  of  so-called  "  Science  "  concerning  "  A  Family  of 
Criminals,"  "  The  Famous  Jukes  Case,"  and  the  everlasting 
reappearance  of  the  six-fingered  and  six-toed  gentry  in 
the  devil's  popular  bible,  the  Sunday  newspaper, — such 
things  as  these  make  us  wish  that  sterility  had  also  been 
an  inherited  quality  of  the  mothers  of  certain  newspaper 
"  scientists "  and  writers.  To  be  brief,  let  us  crowd  the 
matter  into  a  sentence  and  say,  that  the  tendency  of  this 
school  is  to  wipe  out  the  distinctions  between  morals  and 
medicine,  obliterate  the  line  between  sanity  and  insanity, 
and  exonerate  every  criminal  from  responsibility  on  the 
assumed  ground  of  a  special  neurosis  or  a  defective  brain. 
This  is  the  tendency,  more  or  less  plainly  expressed  or 
implied,  but,  at  least,  necessitated  by  the  premises  and 
by  a  frank  logic. 

But  is  it  either  a  good  tendency  or  a  true  conclusion  ? 
Is  it  either  good  science  or  good  sense  ?  Is  it  good 
morals  ?  I  believe  it  is  neither,  and  these  are  some  of  my 
reasons  for  so  disbelieving : — 


294  THE   MODERN   FRANKENSTEIN. 

1.  It  is  asserted  that  criminals  and  the  insane  have  "  de- 
fective, retarded,  and  aberrant  brain  development,"  and 
that  therefore  their  crimes  and  follies  are  anatomically  or 
pathologically  necessitated.  The  common  conclusion  of 
the  studies  of  Benedikt*,  Badikf,  Ten  Kate  and  Pavlosky|, 
Corre  and  Rousel§,  Marro  and  Lombroso||,  Lombroso^f, 
Varaglia**,  Millsft,  Tenchini||,  etc.,  is  that  the  brains  and 
skulls  of  these  classes  are  atypical  or  unsymmetrical. 
This  statement  is  both  true  and  untrue.  I  mean  that  as  an 
abstract  statement  it  is  probably  true  and  may  be  willingly 
admitted.  But  I  wish  first  to  illustrate  the  spirit  of  many 
of  these  inquiries  by  a  quotation  from  Benedikt,  who 
frankly  says  of  his  observations  that  "  they  were  collected 
as  the  result  of  an  a  priori  conviction  that  the  criminal  is 
an  overloaded  individual  having  the  same  relation  to  crime 
as  his  next  of  blood-kin  the  epileptic,  and  his  cousin  the 
idiot,  have  to  their  encephalopathic  condition."  Others 
have  been  less  blunt  in  avowing  their  prejudice,  but  it  seems 
to  have  governed  the  studies  of  most.  Moreover,  if  you 
look  for  atypism  you  will  certainly  find  it.  Why  ?  Be- 
cause it  is  to  be  found  in  criminals  and  the  insane  just  as 
well  as  in  other  good  folk.  It  may  reasonably  be  doubted 
if  there  is  a  perfectly  symmetrical  skull  or  perfectly  typical 


*"  The  Brains  of  Criminals." 

t  Summary  in  Phila.  Med.  Times,  Vol.  xv,  1884,  p.  50. 

X  "  Sur  quelques  Cranes,"  etc.,  /?ev.  cf  Anthrop.,  Paris,  1881. 

§•' Etude  d'un  Serie  de  tStes,"  etc.,  Rev.  d'Anthrop.,  Paris,  1883. 

II  "  Reflessi  tendinei,"  etc.,  Arch,  di  FsicAia/.,  Tornio,  1883. 

^  "  La  pazzia  Morale,"  etc.,  Arch,  di  Psichiat.,  Tormo,  1882.  '•  Fosso 
occipitali,"  etc..  Arch,  di  Psichiat.,  Tomio,  1883.  "  Sul  mancinismo  motoric," 
etc.,  Gior.  d.  r.  accad.  di  Med.  di  Tornio,  1884. 

**"  Note  Anatom.,"  etc.,  Arch,  di  Psichiat.,  Tornio,  1885. 

It "  On  Arrested  and  Aberrant  Devel.,"  etc.,  Jour.  Nerv.  df  Ment.  Dis., 
September,  1886. 

JJ"  Note  sur  la  crSte,"  etc.,  Actes  Cong.  Internal,  d'anthrop.  Crim., 
Rome,  1886. 


THE  MODERN   FRANKENSTEIN.  igS 

brain  in  the  world.  What  do  we  mean  by  typical  ?  Cor- 
respondence to  an  ideal  perfection  and  symmetry.  But 
such  actualities  nowhere  exist.  No  man  ever  saw  a  sym- 
metrical leaf  or  tree,  a  symmetrical  skull  or  brain.  And 
yet  despite  their  determination  to  find  it,  if  possible,  Badik 
and  others  are  forced  to  confess  that  but  a  part  of  their 
criminal  skulls  and  brains  were  "  aberrant,"  "  unsymmet- 
rical,"  "  negroid,"  or  "  simian."  It  may  be  said  that  the 
contention  of  the  more  moderate  is  that  in  the  classes 
considered  there  is  greater  atypism  than  in  the  average 
member  of  the  community.  But  that  is  not  proved.  The 
conclusion  of  the  investigations  so  far  proves  only  that  a 
certain  number  of  criminal  brains  and  skulls  are  atypical. 
Very  well !  But  what  about  those  that,  so  far  as  discover- 
able, are  normal  ?  And  what  about  those  sane  folks  with 
atypical  skulls  ?  The  Greek  skeptic  shown  the  offerings 
of  rescued  shipwrecked  mariners  who  had  in  the  hour  of 
peril  devoted  these  presents  to  the  god,  calmly  asked, 
where  also  were  the  offerings  of  those  not  saved.  No 
large,  careful,  and  scientific  measuring  of  the  sane  and 
moral  has  been  made  and  compared  with  that  of  the  insane 
and  criminal.  Clevenger  doubts  if  any  differences  could  be 
found  in  such  a  comparative  examination.  Science  means 
prevision,  but  if  the  brains  and  crania  of  the  ten  last  dead 
from  the  State  Prison,  the  Insane  Asylum,  and  yesterday's 
railroad  disaster  were  gathered,  there  is  no  expert  or  set 
of  cerebrologists  in  the  world  could  either  put  the  thirty 
brains  back  in  their  proper  cases  or  designate  with  any 
certainty  to  what  class  of  the  three  any  one  belonged.  No 
man  from  the  criminal  history  of  the  life  alone  can  tell  you 
in  advance  a  single  peculiarity  of  the  brain  of  the  man  hung 
to-day.  The  cranium  and  brain  of  Pigott  are  said  to  have 
been  of  exceptional  symmetry  and  perfection,  and  yet  he  in- 
vented Pigottry,  having  first  practiced  it  all  his  life.  The 
skull  of  an  excellent  physician  of  this  city  has,  on  account 


296  THE   MODERN   FRANKENSTEIN. 

of  its  astonishing  asymmetry,  been  noticed  and  marveled  at 
across  the  amphitheater.  It  is  needless  to  say  he  belongs 
"  sa7is  phrase  "  to  the  nonanatomical  school  of  cerebrolo- 
gists. 

Thus  not  only  is  the  so-called  fact  not  proved,  and  so  far 
utterly  without  significance,  but  the  interpretation  of  the 
fact  is  a  non  seqtiitur.  It  does  not  follow,  nor  is  it  proved, 
that  defective,  aberrant,  atypical,  or  simian  brains  and  skulls 
imply  immorality  or  insanity.  Functional  defect  there  may 
be,  but  neither  scalpel  nor  microscope  has  proved  any  other 
to  exist.  If  he  does  not  know  from  what  animal  it  came, 
no  expert  could  tell  whether  a  sheep's  brain  or  that  of  a 
tiger  were  the  more  crime-producing  one.  Post  hoc  is  not 
propter  hoc,  as  philosophers  have  to  be  warned  a  hundred 
times  a  day.  How  tired  we  get  hallooing  at  these  propter 
hoc  hunters  to  call  them  from  the  way  their  game  has  not 
taken.  Away  they  go  again  after  \ki€\x  post  hoc,  whilst  all 
the  time  their  Reynard,  their  propter  hoc,  sits  calmly  on  the 
fence  watching  and  chuckling  at  them.  "  Deficient  gyri- 
development  and  asymmetry  "  may  necessitate  the  poor 
owner  to  be  a  thief  or  a  lunatic,  but  I  think  the  shape  of  the 
pisiform  bone  should  also  be  considered.  Artemus  Ward 
said  he  knew  a  man  in  Oregon  who  hadn't  a  tooth  in  his 
head,  not  a  single  tooth,  and  yet  this  same  man  could  beat 
the  bass-drum  better  than  any  other  man  he  ever  heard. 

I  cannot  forbear  to  impale  another  and  related  pleasantry 
of  these  logicians:  this  is  the  unjustifiable  humanity-con- 
ceit that  like  a  hideous  Jack-in-the-box  springs  at  you  in 
the  sneer  of  the  words  "  simian,"  "  negroid,"  "  reversion  to 
the  animal  type,"  etc.,  when  speaking  of  these  atypical 
brains.  I  ask  in  all  sincerity  and  seriousness,  if  we  are  a  jot 
more  moral  than  our  remote  simian  forefathers  ?  Nay,  are 
we  not  even  less  so  ?  Take  a  thousand  members  of  the 
New  York  and  Chicago  Stock  Exchange,  and  a  thousand 
monkeys  in  a  cage  or  in  their  native  woods, — which  set  of 


THE   MODERN   FRANKENSTEIN.  297 

gentlemen  will  break  the  eleven  commandments  the  greater 
number  of  times  Anno  Domini  1889?  As  to  the  shame- 
less "  negroid,"  who  was  the  greater  sinner,  the  white  slave- 
holder or  his  victim  ?  Or  read  the  astounding  and  horrible 
record  revealed  in  the  official  statement  of  the  pardons 
granted  convicts  by  the  Governor  of  South  Carolina,  also  in 
the  year  of  our  Lord  1888.*  Such  facts  as  this  last,  and 
such  theories  as  we  are  discussing,  almost  make  one  say,  as 
the  joker  did  of  life,  it  is  one-half  z/",  and  three-fourths  lie. 

2.  In  the  second  place,  this  theory  is  contradicted  by 
the  law  of  biologic  evolution.  Throughout  the  countless 
ages  of  organic  development,  life  has  preceded  function, 
and  function  has  preceded  morphology,  f 

Habitual  action  creates  peculiarity  of  structure ;  desire 
begets  its  own  instruments.  Character  is  inherited  before 
its  organs,  if  it  have  any,  appear.  Nay,  more ;  character, 
in  truth,  creates  its  organs.  How  in  the  name  of  common 
sense  could  it  be  otherwise  ? 

Hunger  existed  before  stomachs,  eating  produced  teeth, 
fighting  begot  horns,  the  snake's  enemy  existed  before  his 
fangs  and  poison-sacs.  In  precisely  the  same  way,  if  crime 
and  crankiness  have  an  anatomic  basis,  it  is  because  ras- 
cality and  folly  preceded  any  structural  instrumentalities  or 
peculiarities.  If  we  are  seeking  the  origin  of  crime,  we 
cannot,  in  the  name  of  reason,  expect  to  find  it  by  the  cart- 
before-horse  logic  of  supposing  an  organ  can  exist  prior  to 
the  desire  and  function  of  which  it  is  the  instrument. 

»  See  The  Nation,  April  4,  1889. 

f  Hydra  viridis,  for  example,  has  no  eyes  and  is  yet  sensitive  to  light ;  no 
brain  or  nerves  and  yet  lies  in  wait  for  prey,  pursues  and  fights,  or  flees  from 
danger.  Turned  inside  out  it  lives  and  digests  as  well  as  before.  It  holds  live 
worms  down  with  an  arm  when  they  try  to  get  out  of  its  stomach.  Any  part 
reproduces  all.  Cut  off  the  bottom  of  its  stomach  and  it  goes  on  eating  the 
same  as  ever,  the  food,  of  course,  falling  out  of  the  bottom, — in  this  last  respect 
not  unlike  certain  fact-gatherers  without  a  logical  stomach-bottom  to  digest 
their  large  eating. 
26 


298  THE  MODERN  FRANKENSTEIN. 

3.  A  sound  metaphysic,  psychology,  and  cerebrology, 
each,  also  drives  a  nail  in  the  coffin.  The  morality  or 
sanity  of  a  man  is  his  action  and  nature  as  a  unit;  these 
qualities  relate  only  to  conduct  as  a  whole.  There  can  be 
no  conceivable  localization  of  function  of  morality  or 
reason.  These  things  consist  in  the  use  the  mind  puts  all 
its  centers  to ;  they  refer  to  the  aniimis  of  the  soul  itself 
that  inhabits  and  uses  all  organs  as  its  instruments.  Inter- 
ference with  the  action  of  a  part  or  the  whole  of  the  brain, 
nay,  even  nondevelopment  of  the  brain  as  a  whole,  cannot 
change  the  true  quality  of  the  action  of  the  mind ;  it  can 
only  lessen  its  effectiveness.  The  hand  of  a  liar  and  the 
hand  of  an  honest  man  do  not  differ.  It  is  the  liar  and 
the  honest  man  that  are  different.  If  the  hand  do  not 
differ,  neither  can  the  brain-centers  that  mediate  between 
desire  and  function.  I  know  very  well,  to  speak  before 
modern  scientific  men  of  "  the  soul  "  and  as  if  there  were  a 
somewhat  behind  cerebral  ganglia  using  them  as  a  master 
does  tools,  is  quite  certain  to  raise  many  smiles,  and  secure 
one  the  pitying  contempt  due  to  the  stupid  worshiper  of 
some  semibarbaric  image  when  the  newer  and  more  elegant 
faith  is  the  vogue.  The  fashionables  enjoy  the  sweetness  of 
their  supposed  superior  wisdom ;  the  poor  dolt  the  sweet- 
ness of  his  fetich  and  his  faith.  But  in  crying,  "  Great  is 
Diana,"  the  fashionable  worshipers  of  Materialism  should 
remember  that  the  walls  of  logic  and  of  fact  that  shelter  the 
old  spiritualistic  boobies  and  their  altars  are  quite  as  firm 
as  ever.  Omne  zdvum  ex  ovo  is  the  legend  of  the  doorway, 
and  Archebiosis  is  the  myth.  Many  of  the  supposed 
arch-priests  of  Materialism  are  in  fact  traitors  in  this 
respect, — Spencer  and  Huxley,*  for  example. 

*  (See  Spencer's  Biology,  Vol.  i,  pp.  222,  253,  etc.)  Spencer's  position  is 
well  known.  Here  is  a  gem  from  Huxley  :  "  Cells  are  no  more  the  producers 
of  vital  phenomena  than  the  shells  scattered  in  orderly  lines  along  the  sea- 
beach  are  the  instruments  by  which  the  force  of  the  moon's  gravity  acts  upon 


THE   MODERN   FRANKENSTEIN.  299 

4.  But  the  happiest  of  the  funeral-attendants  will  be 
ethics.  Determinism  is  the  ally  of  Materialism.  The  step 
from  this  belief  in  the  anatomic  nature  of  crime  and  loss 
of  self-control  to  absolute  fatalism  is  a  small  one  indeed. 
If  we  lie  because  a  gyrus  gets  kinked  or  is  wanting,  rob 
the  till  because  of  our  simian  kind  of  brain,  and  choke  the 
girl  to  death  that  jilts  us  because  of  our  cerebral  asym- 
metry, then  it  follows  that  every  sane  act  and  thought 
and  emotion  is  predetermined  by  our  neurologic  anatomy. 
"The  delight  in  which  certain  logic-choppers  revel  in  break- 
ing down  the  barriers  of  self-dependence  and  the  belief  in 
individual  freedom  is  quite  wonderful.  It  is  hardly  explain- 
able except  upon  the  somewhat  insulting  assumption  that, 
themselves  feeling  and  desiring  no  moral  freedom,  they 
prefer  the  tyranny  of  structure  as  an  excuse  for  not  follow- 
ing the  higher  law.  Benedikt  has  a  funny  story  that  he,  of 
course,  tells  in  all  seriousness.  He  says  he  asked  an  "  in- 
telligent counterfeiter "  if,  circumstances  permitting,  he 
would  again  repeat  his  crime.  For  a  reply  the  intelligent 
counterfeiter  said :  "  When  I  die,  I  will  you  my  skull  and 
brain."  The  old  Dryasdust  sagely  observes  that  this 
answer  was  more  correct  than  any  given  by  philosopher  or 
criminalist  as  to  the  psychology  of  crime.  I  could  not  help 
thinking  I  would  like  to  have  seen  the  glittering  leer  of 
the  counterfeiter,  evidently  a  fine  joker,  as,  "  flattering  his 
humor  to  the  top  of  his  bent,"  his  victim  turned  away. 
The  curb-stone  logic  of  the  matter  is  that  if  asymmetry 
produces  crankiness  and  crime,  then,  in  the  future,  all  that 
embryonic  cranks  and  criminals  will  have  to  do  to  excuse 
their  depraved  desires  is  to  consult  a  professor  of  this  new 
phrenology,  and,  the  diagnosis  of  "  atypism  "  once  settled, 
they  will  hasten  home  to  indulge  their  "  inherited  neuro- 


tbe  ocean.     Like  these,  the  cells  mark  only  where  the  vital   tides  have  been 
and  how  they  have  acted." 


300  THE   MODERN   FRANKENSTEIN. 

sis  "  and  "  moral  anesthesia  "  by  crack-walking,  wife-beat- 
ing, intelligent  counterfeiting,  or  the  innocent  pleasures  of 
"  homicidal  mania." 

If  Guiteau  had  known  his  brain  was  "  congenitally  asym- 
metrical," the  disappointed  office-seeker  would  probably 
have  tried  his  marksmanship  on  an  earlier  President.  It 
may  be  that  fatalism  is  true,  but  if  so,  this  universe  is  a 
stupendous  and  horrifying  failure  and  farce,  and  the  theory 
that  premises  fatalism  had  better  pause  before  thus  giving 
the  lie  to  both  God  and  man. 

Are  we  not  indeed  fully  conscious,  we  who  are  honest 
and  true,  that  within  us  burns  a  light  no  trick  of  matter 
can  quench,  a  power  to  resist  the  weaknesses  and  the 
tyrannies  of  flesh  and  desire,  and  that  in  all  our  lives  there 
is,  or  may  be,  a  moral  force  and  an  intellectual  prevision 
to  which  heredity  is  the  obedient  slave  ? 

5.  Moreover,  just  as  inevitably  as  this  theory  leads  to 
fatalism  and  hence  to  immorality,  it  also  leads  to  economic 
injustice.  All  things,  good  or  bad,  are  measurable  by  the 
tally-stick  of  financial  justice.  I  protest  that  the  general 
tendency  of  this  hypothesis,  and  of  its  corollaries,  is  to  cre- 
ate lunatics  and  criminals  and  to  shield  criminality  with 
the  cloak  of  insanity.  As  a  result,  the  expense  of  main- 
taining the  defective  and  criminal  classes,  and  of  keeping 
up  both  the  sham  and  the  reality  of  legal  justice,  is  increas- 
ing faster  than  the  population.  This  expense  has  to  be 
borne  by  the  producer.  Who  is  he  ?  The  producer,  whom 
present  methods  do  in  reality  punish,  is  he  that  quenches 
in  himself  the  beginnings  of  folly  and  unwisdom  ;  is  he  that 
throttles  in  their  inception  the  promptings  of  over-indul- 
gence and  disregard  for  others'  rights ;  he  that  works  for 
himself  rather  than  scheme  and  cheat  others  out  of  their 
earnings.  In  other  words,  the  popular  practice  and  theory 
punishes  a  man  for  preserving  his  sanity  and  honor  by 
burdening  him  with  the  support  of  the  thriftless  and  the 
depraved. 


THE   MODERN   FRANKENSTEIN.  301 

6.  Lastly,  this  wearisome  absurdity  is  to  be  condemned 
because  it  is  contrary  to  God's  law — pardon  me,  I  mean 
the  law  of  natural  selection — and  unavoidably  creates  the 
evil  it  deplores.  It  is  no  more  nor  less  than  a  reward  held 
out  to  all  neurasthenics  and  hysterics,  all  lazy-bones  and 
cheats,  to  indulge  their  criminal  leanings  and  inordinate 
appetites.  Since  time  began  wise  and  kind  old  Mother 
Nature  has  found  that,  loving  the  many  as  she  does,  rather 
than  the  few,  the  only  true  love  of  all  is  the  law,  Vauriens 
and  vicious  to  the  wall !  Civilization  has  suddenly  grown 
wiser  than  the  divine  or  cosmic  source  whence  it  sprang 
and  thinks  it  has  found  a  better  way.  But  is  not  a  man 
to  be  written  down  as  an  ass  that  scorns  his  father  and 
mother?  The  modern  conceit,  that  we  know  better  than 
God  and  nature,  seems  but  simply  more  egregiously  and 
more  impiously  long-eared. 

It  is  the  glory  of  fine  minds  and  hearts  to  bear  as  their 
s&cret  motto,  socii  Dei  sumus ;  but  the  modern  paraphrase 
is,  spcii  diaboli  siimus.  By  our  brutal  pity  and  by  our  cruel 
sympathy  we  are  piling  up  the  burden  of  the  future,  in  our 
coddling  of  debility  and  in  our  nursing  of  deceit,  both  of 
which — easy  is  the  descent  to  hell — hasten  to  full-fledge 
into  slum,  asylum,  and  prison  problems.  Pity  without 
justice  is  itself  crime.  There  is  no  greater  sinner  against 
society  than  the  indiscriminate  alms-giver.  By  encourag- 
ing self-delusion,  and  discouraging  self-control,  this  theory 
of  anatomically  necessitated  crime  operates  to  deteriorate 
the  average  virility  of  the  race  and  so  immensely  increases 
suffering.  There  is  always  a  vast  horde  of  incarnate  canine 
appetites  in  human  society  restlessly  awaiting  the  slipping 
of  the  leash  of  law  and  labor  to  rush  baying  after  the  temp- 
tations of  indulgence,  vice,  and  crime.  That  society  and 
that  science  are  the  better  assured  of  perpetuity  that  tighten 
rather  than  cut  both  collar  and  leash. 

It  will  have  been  noticed,  and  you  doubtless  have  mar- 


302  THE   MODERN   FRANKENSTEIN. 

veled,  that  I  face  and  treat  this  problem  in  a  novel  way ;  it 
may  be  thought  that  I  have  allowed  feeling  rather  than 
reason  to  dictate,  and  that  my  tirade  were  better  addressed 
to  the  vulgar  many  rather  than  to  the  scientific  few.  But 
it  has  been  with  "malice  aforethought"  that  I  have  thus 
written,  believing  as  I  do  that  the  present  so-called  "scien- 
tific "  attitude  of  the  profession  as  to  this  matter  is,  in  truth, 
inexplainable  otherwise ;  I  mean  to  say  that  this  tendency 
to  erase  the  word  responsibility  from  the  dictionary  of  law 
and  sociology  is  itself  the  unreasoning,  unscientific  voice 
of  our  age  and  generation.  Unconsciously,  but  none  the 
less  truly,  it  is  flattery  of  the  Zeitgeist,  and  flattery  of  that 
capricious  and  greedy  goddess  is  for  clear-thinking  and 
straight-seeing  people  the  one  unpardonable  sin,  the  sin 
against  the  Holy  Ghost.  The  Zeitgeist  and  the  Heilige 
Geist  are  two  quite  different  things.  The  Zeitgeist  is  never 
in  the  right.      Vox  popiili  is  never  vox  Dei* 

We  have,  for  example,  to  close  the  book  from  sheer 
shuddering  when  we  read  of  the  malignity  and  diablerie 
with  which  criminals  and  lunatics  were  treated  in  the  past. 
It  seems  impossible  that  so-called  criminals  were  slowly 
roasted  for  hours  or  days  while  the  spectacle  was  made 
the  gayest  of  all  festal  occasions  by  laughing  maidens  and 
flirting  cavaliers.  The  smell  of  burning  flesh  and  the 
writhings  and  cries  of  the  agonized  victims  were  sweet  to 
these  strange  fiends.  We  can  hardly  believe  that  idiots 
and  madmen  were  chained  in  filth  for  years,  kept  immersed 
in  ice-water  for  days,  whirled  in  rotating  machines  till  their 
tormenters  were  tired,  etc.,  etc.  We  flatter  ourselves,  how- 
ever, when  we  think  we  are  wiser.  Our  present  lachry- 
mose barbarism  is  in  the  first  place  quite  as  cruel  to  some 
one  and  is  explainable  only  as  the  contrary  swing  of  the 
pendulum  to  the  opposite  extreme. 

*  "  Maximus  erroris populus  magister,"     Coke. 


THE  MODERN   FRANKENSTEIN.  303 

One  extreme  always  begets  its  opposite  in  the  fickle, 
passions  of  popular  feeling.  Physicians  should  at  least 
know  something  about  the  law  of  action  and  reaction.  It 
is  quite  as  true  law  in  history  as  in  pathology.  We  have 
only  substituted  an  indirect  and  weak  maleficence  for  a 
direct  and  brutal  malevolence.  Never  for  a  moment  have 
we  thought  that  our  feelings  should  have  had  no  voice  in 
the  matter,  but  that  justice,  utility,  and  prophylaxis  should 
have  been  the  rules.  This  question  cannot  be  studied 
apart  from  its  relations  and  historical  connections.  It  is  a 
sociological  question,  and  all  such  questions  and  theories 
must  be  judged  by  their  results,  logical  or  actual.  A  thing 
may  be  true  in  itself  but  false  in  its  relations  and  pernicious 
in  its  consequences.  Many  true  things  are  untrue.  Es- 
tablish foundling-hospitals,  where  the  brats  of  lubricity  are 
cared  for  better  than  the  sweater-babies,  and  at  once  con- 
cupiscence doubles  and  trebles  the  number  of  illegitimate 
and  syphilitic  starvelings.  The  world's  greatest  statistician. 
Dr.  Farr,  stigmatizes  the  shame  of  race-deterioration  that 
we  permit  in  allowing  the  imbecile,  idle,  criminal,  and  defec- 
tive classes  to  breed  ad  libitum.  Prof.  A.  Graham  Bell  * 
says  by  permitting  intermarriages  we  are  actually  produc- 
ing a  deaf-mute  variety  of  the  race. 

And  this  brings  us  to  the  essence  of  the  whole  matter : 
the  origin  of  criminals  and  the  mentally  diseased.  Sup- 
pose, for  argument's  sake,  we  admit  that  some  lunatics 
and  even  some  criminals  are  what  they  are  by  the  force  of 
organic  and  anatomic  necessity.  What  then  ?  Only  this, 
that  we  are  then  bound  to  ask  how  the  "  moral  anes- 
thesia "  and  "  cerebral  atypism  "  came  into  being.  In 
obedience  to  what  necessity  or  desire,  in  response  to  what 
peculiarity  of  the  environment,  did  these  defective  brains 
and  skulls  arise  ?     The  bat's  wing,  the  seal's  fin,  a  cat's 

*  Science,  April  17,  1885. 


304  THE   MODERN  FRANKENSTEIN. 

paw,  a  horse's  foot,  a  man's  hand, — these  modifications-  of 
one  primal  organ  were  molded  by  the  needs  of  the  crea- 
ture and  the  actions  of  the  environment  into  their  different 
shapes.  These  two  things,  then,  we  have  to  consider :  first, 
the  rascal  or  fool  per  se,  his  needs,  desires,  tendencies,  etc., 
and,  second,  the  environment  that  creates  and  encourages 
the  rascal  and  fool. 

As  to  the  first  inquiry,  I  again  assert  that  if  law-breakers 
or  wrecked  minds  are  such  by  the  stringent  necessity  of 
their  inherited  cerebral  defects — a  fact  I  by  no  means 
admit, — then  it  follows  that  we  must  go  to  the  parents.  It 
cannot  be  argued  that  heredity  forces  us  back  ad  infinitum, 
either  to  the  biblical  Adam  or  to  our  simian  ancestry.  In 
this  case  we  are  not  "  bound  to  go  the  whole  ourang," 
because,  on  the  one  hand,  the  old  myth,  wise  as  it  was,  was 
not  science;  and,  again,  because  old  Mother  Nature,  left  to 
her  own  grand  wisdom,  soon  cuts  short  both  crank  and 
criminal  with  summary  kindness.  At  the  farthest  we  shall 
only  have  to  go  back  but  one  or  two  generations  to  find 
the  criminal  and  the  lunatic  in  the  making.  The  eye  that 
pierces  shams  sees  it  all  about  every  day,  this  subtle  secret 
manufacturing.  However  heinous  and  horrible,  all  lunacy 
and  all  iniquity  began  at  some  time  with  slight  and  repeti- 
tive, but  always  conscious,  departures  from  right  living  and 
right  thinking.  *  The  duty  of  sound  minds,  sound  medi- 
cine, and  sound  science  is  to  check  and  stop  these  depar- 
tures. Withstand  beginnings,  is  the  logic  of  all  health, 
mental  or  moral. 

Like  a  bear  by  the  ears  Materialism  always  lugs  in  this 
question  of  heredity  wherewith  to  frighten  the  children  of 
the  spirit.  But  with  amazing  illogicality  it  begs  the  whole 
question  in  coolly  assuming  that  only  matter  can  inherit, 

*  Justice  Stephen  recognized  this  when  he  says  in  reference  to  crime  that 
the  excuse  of  defective  mental  power,  etc.,  does  not  hold  '*  if  the  absence  of 
the  power  of  self-control  has  been  produced  by  his  own  default." 


THE   MODERN   FRANKENSTEIN.  305 

whilst  every  fact  of  embryology  and  organic  evolution 
shows  it  is  the  soul,  the  spirit,  the  character,  that  inherits 
and  that  molds  the  organs  of  mind  into  shapes  consonant 
with  its  own  immaterial  heritages.  It  may  be  asked :  If 
structure  is  not  inherited,  what  then  is  inherited  ? — and  I, 
in  turn,  ask  :  If  structure  is  inherited,  when  is  it  inherited  ? 
Is  there  any  recognizable  atypism  in  the  fetus  ?  No,  it 
only  exists  some  20  or  40  years  after  the  tendency  has  been 
inherited,  and  after  conception  has  taken  place.  Tendency 
was  inherited,  and  tendency,  if  you  please,  produced  the 
atypism  or  the  criminal.  The  ovum  or  spermatozoid,  a 
structureless  cell  of  the  most  primitive  protoplasm,  so 
small  that  it  is  invisible  to  the  naked  eye,  contains  the  sum- 
mary of  millions  of  past  lives  and  the  possibilities  of  mil- 
lions to  come,  for  each  bearing  numberless  inherited 
peculiarities  even  to  the  curl  of  hair  and  peculiarity  of 
speech.  Where  is  the  inherited  structure  in  this  tiny  speck 
of  matter  ?  The  inheritance  of  power  to  make  structure  is 
NOT  the  inheritance  of  structure.  The  liar  puts  his  brain  to 
lying  uses ;  the  same  brain  could  mediate  truth  quite  as 
well.  The  lie  is  not  in  the  brain  ;  it  is  in  the  liar.  If  you 
please,  the  liar  and  his  brain  are  two  quite  distinguishable 
somewhats.  Moreover,  this  so-called  "  iron  law  of  her- 
edity "  is  very  flexible  steel,  aye,  is  utterly  limp  in  the  hands 
of  evolution.  "  The  instances  in  which  accidental  deform- 
ities are  not  transmitted,"  says  a  great  biologist,  "  out- 
number those  in  which  they  are  inherited."  Did  Shake- 
speare, Caesar,  Bismarck,  Washington,  and  thousand  such, 
draw  their  genius  from  an  ancestry  ever  growing  and 
straining  to  the  culminating  bloom  ?  Not  at  all.  The 
imps  of  determinism  have  not  yet  caught  all  the  birds  of 
freedom  either  with  the  lime  of  a  whipster's  logic  or  with 
the  net  of  assumed  facts. 

Among  the  causes  tending  in  the  individual  to  produce 
slight,  oft-repeated,  and  conscious  infringements  of  moral 


3o6  THE   MODERN   FRANKENSTEIN. 

and  psychological  laws,  not  a  few  must  be  laid  to  the 
charge  of  the  biological  laws  under  which  we  have  arisen 
and  exist.  The  presence  of  the  grinning  death's  head 
behind  every  smile  and  at  all  our  feasts;  the  incertainty  of 
the  modern  mind  as  to  life's  continuance,  and  even  as  to 
the  goodness  at  the  heart  of  things ;  the  stupendous  and 
execrable  tricking  of  every  personality  by  the  duperie  of 
sexual  passion  ;  the  subtle  and  inscrutable  diseases  lurking 
everywhere  to  pounce  upon  us ;  the  earthquake,  storm, 
cold,  and  pest  bringing  palsy  to  endeavor  and  ruin  to 
labor ;  the  hunger  and  the  animal  appetites  always  to 
satisfy  or  conquer — all  these  are  but  indications  that  life  is 
a  warfare,  and  that  our  cosmic  father  has  designs  and  facial 
lineaments  very  different  from  those  of  Christian  benig- 
nancy.  Siint  lacrinice  rerum.  In  the  struggle  of  life,  the 
weak,  the  unlucky — for  what  else  can  you  call  many  such? 
— give  away  mentally  or  morally,  give  way  under  these 
diabolical  teasings  or  downright  thunderbolts  of  destiny, 
and  man  answers  nature's  inhumanity  and  brutality  and 
trickery  with  the  same  arguments  :  6  Xbyoq  adp^  iyivero, — the 
word  became  flesh  ; — the  criminal  and  the  shattered  mind 
are  in  these  cases  the  products  of  nature's  inscrutable  in- 
ethicality,  children  of  a  strangely  cruel  parent,  which  the 
remaining  strong  and  honest  have  to  care  for.  And  thus 
burden  begins. 

But  this  part  of  our  burden  is  a  small  one  in  comparison 
with  that  chargeable  to  society's  wronging  of  the  individual. 
It  is  the  oldest,  truest  of  truths :  man  is  man's  worst 
enemy.  When  one  looks  out  over  history,  through  the 
long  catalogue  of  bloody  and  iniquitous  centuries;  when 
one  looks  among  the  present  nations,  with  their  standing 
armies  of  professional  killers,  their  protective  tariffs,  their 
monopolistic  laws  and  laissez-faires,  their  crime-breeding 
and  lunacy-nursing  deviltries, — one  almost  feels  like  the 
old    pessimist,    who    wished    he   could    go   to   the   moon 


THE   MODERN   FRANKENSTEIN.  307 

in  order  to  be  able  to  spit  upon  the  whole  human  race 
at  one  time. 

Now,  the  moral  of  all  this  is  that  these  things,  one  and 
several,  by  the  consent  of  all  statisticians,  economists,  and 
psychologists,  are  profound,  persistent,  and  necessary 
causes  of  crime  and  insanity.  The  maxim  of  Quetelet,  that 
society  prepares  crime  whilst  the  criminal  only  executes  it, 
is  of  course  but  a  partial  truth,  but  it  is  a  great,  a  solid, 
and  an  unconquerable  truth.  There  is  no  escape  from  a 
social  or  communal  responsibility  in  the  production  of  law- 
breaking  and  mental  wreckage.  And  it  is  precisely  this 
secret,  subtle,  haunting  sense  of  guilt  in  the  public  con- 
science that  lies  at  the  bottom  of  the  disgusting  tendency 
at  which  medicine  has  simpered  and  ogled,  to  cry,  "  Poor 
fellow,  he  was  crazy ;  he  shouldn't  have  brained  his  baby, 
but  he  was  not  responsible.  Let's  build  him  a  nice  big 
asylum,  and  feed  him,  and  hire  attendants  and  doctors  to 
wait  on  him."  If  he  amuse  himself  knocking  the  attendants 
over  the  head,  and  tearing  their  clothes  off,  the  black-eyed 
attendant  must  only  smile  and  say,  "  Poor  fellow !  " 

We  shall  soon  illustrate  in  a  large  historical  way  the 
medieval  story  of  the  peasant  and  his  son,  who  returning 
one  evening  past  the  gibbet  noticed  that  one  of  the 
wretches  that  had  been  condemned  "  to  die  upright  in  the 
sun  "  was  wriggling  about  not  dead.  In  pity  they  cut  him 
down,  resuscitated  him,  and  took  him  home.  He  soon 
proved  such  a  worthless,  workless,  thieving  lout  that '  i' 
the  dark  o'  the  moon  '  they  took  him  back  in  disgust,  and 
strung  him  up  again  on  the  gibbet. 

The  expert  on  the  witness-stand  prostituting  the  name 
of  medicine  and  of  science  to  cover  some  scoundrel  with 
the  tear-proof  cloak  of  insanity  is  a  sorry  sight  indeed.  He 
may  be  sincere  and  honest;  if  so,  our  verdict  would  be 
that  of  the  Welsh  jury  :  "  Not  guilty  ;  but  we  recommend 
him  not  to  do  it  again."     It  reminds  one  of  what  the  joker 


3o8  THE   MODERN   FRANKENSTEIN. 

Said  of  a  glass-eye :  Everybody  can  see  through  it  except 
the  wearer.  In  considering  the  subtileness  and  intricacies 
of  their  diagnoses,  so  well  as  the  contradictoriness  of  the 
testimony  of  rival  experts,  one  thinks  of  the  cannibal  chief's 
reply  as  to  what  had  become  of  the  missionaries.  "  Alas  !" 
he  said,  "  they  gave  us  so  much  good  advice,  we  had  to 
put  them  to  death  mercifully." 

In  the  old  days  of  the  childhood  of  the  race  the  troubled 
conscience  got  rid  of  communal  responsibility  by  heaping 
its  sins  metaphorically  on  a  poor  little  goat  or  sheep,  and 
shoo-shooing  it  over  a  precipice.  It  was  crude ;  it  was  a 
funny  bit  of  psychological  legerdemain  ;  it  was  hard  on  the 
goat,  but — it  was  satisfactory.  Modern  scape-goat  worship 
is  a  poor  substitute.  It  also  is  crude,  and  it  is  jugglery, 
but  is  unsatisfactory.  The  future  will  see  through  the 
trick  and  will  find  it  horribly  expensive.  The  Chinese  way 
is  doubtless  a  little  of  the  opposite  extreme,  but  it  doesn't 
load  up  the  future  :  they  regard  insanity  not  as  an  extenu- 
ating but  as  an  aggravating  circumstance  in  connection 
with  crime.* 

There  is  another  reason  why  the  communal  conscience 
and  responsibility  cannot  be  downed.  Not  only  do  we 
make  bad  laws,  fail  to  make  good  laws,  and  leave  good 
laws  unexecuted,  but  we  are  more  or  less  conscious  that 
the  community  is  full  of  unarrested,  unpunished  criminals 
and  insane.  As  every  brain  and  skull,  rigidly  considered, 
is  atypical  to  some  extent,  so  every  one  is  guilty  of  more 
or  less  scoundrelism  ;  we  are  all  a  little  daft.  Often,  too, 
the  difference  between  the  criminal  behind  iron  bars  and 
the  criminal  behind  social  custom  is  only  a  difference  of 
intellect.     The  first  simply   got   caught.     Maudsley   well 


*  With  its  300,000,000  inhabitants  China  has  no  asylum  for  the  insane.  At 
the  Shanghai  hospital,  where  22,000  patients  are  treated  annually,  there  were 
but  eleven  cases  of  insanity  among  the  number. 


THE  MODERN  FRANKENSTEIN.  309 

says,  "  There  is  a  sort  of  tacit  conspiracy  in  the  social  world 
to  believe  itself  more  virtuous  than  it  is."  This  also  coin- 
cides with  the  common  impudence  that  tries  to  make  crime 
and  mental  disease  the  result  of  ignorance  and  humble 
social  position,  the  fact,  of  course,  being  the  exact  reverse. 
Modern  education  and  modern  wealth  are  at  last  but  a  sort 
of  taking  down  the  bars,  or  a  training  in  jumping,  whereby 
selfishness  may  get  into  forbidden  clover.  The  sharp, 
educated,  superrefined  urban  population  would  rot  in  its 
weakness  and  corruption  if  the  stupid,  honest  country  lads 
and  lassies  did  not  transfuse  their  blood  and  virtue  and 
health  into  its  veins  every  day. 

To  sum  the  matter  up  :  Is  the  origin  of  crime  and  mental 
disease  to  be  sought  in  the  individual  or  in  the  influence  of- 
the  environment  ?  Undoubtedly  in  both,  but  it  agrees 
with  what  evolution  teaches  as  to  the  origin  of  faculty,  and 
it  corresponds  with  what  we  learn  by  a  study  of  the  laws 
and  customs  of  our  modern  life,  to  lay  by  far  the  larger 
burden  of  responsibility  on  forces  outside  and  beyond  the 
government  of  the  errant  one.  In  unison  with  this  comes 
also  the  thought  that  toward  this  view  tend  the  lessons  of 
a  true  religion  and  a  large  kindness.  To  see  how  outraged, 
groping,  suffering,  and  enduring  humanity  clings  to  right- 
ness  of  conduct  and  sanity  of  mind,  leads  us  to  the  pro- 
foundest  honor  and  reverence  of  our  kind. 

All  of  these  considerations  are  of  the  greatest  interest 
and  far-reaching  value,  so  far  as  concerns  the  origin  and 
the  prophylaxis  of  crime  and  insanity;  but  my  contention 
would  be  pointless  and  my  logic  most  lame  if  I  did  not  at 
once  add,  that  so  soon  as  the  overt  act,  that  is,  the  proved 
criminal  or  mentally  incompetent,  stands  before  you,  his 
judge,  the  whole  question  of  responsibility  or  irresponsi- 
bility sinks  at  once  and  wholly  out  of  sight.  No  judge  or 
jury  or  expert  should  have  anything  whatever  to  do  as  to 
the  prisoner's  responsibility  for  his  act.     The  whole  Gor- 


3to  THE   MODERN   FRANKENSTEIN. 

dian  knot  is  cut  at  one  quick  stroke  by  the  staring,  evident 
fact  that  nothing  less  than  divine  omniscience  is  in  the  least 
capable  of  deciding  the  question,  or  of  meting  out  the 
punishment  according  to  guilt.  It  is  a  bald,  hideous,  and 
stupendous  absurdity,  this  ridiculous  assumption  either  of 
power  or  of  right  on  the  part  of  any  human  being  to  ex- 
plore the  hidden  recesses  of  the  mind,  and  to  decide  how 
far  sanity  has  been  driven  out,  and  how  far  that  strange 
mystery  of  individuality  has  sinned  against  its  own  light 
and  by  its  own  consent*  Every  good,  modest,  and  large  in- 
telligence knows  this  is  so  and  mourns  the  barbaric  shame 
that  keeps  the  enormity  upon  our  statute  books. 

As  a  necessary  corollary  you  will  have  foreseen  that,  in 
my  view,  the  death  penalty  should  be  abolished.  Words 
fail  me  to  express  the  hideousness  of  this  last  relic  of 
savagery  in  an  age  of  so-called  civilization  or  even  of  good 
sense.  There  is  not  a  single  thing  that  can  be  said  in  its 
favor  that  is  not  at  once  annihilated  by  a  spark  of  common 
sense  or  common  justice.  Whilst  private  retaliation  and 
vengeance  were  allowed,  an  eye  for  an  eye  and  a  life  for  a 
life  were  excusable ;  but  in  taking  away  from  the  wronged 
man  the  right  to  kill  his  injurer,  you  have  left  retaliation 
and  vengeance  behind  as  unworthy  and  useless  examples  of 
barbarism.  Lord  Bramwell's  deterrent  theory  of  punish- 
ment collapses  like  a  soap-bubble  when  you  probe  it  with 
fact  or  logic.  It  is  on  a  par  with  Niemeyer's  approval  of 
the  dictum  of  the  wife  of  a  Prussian  general  that  whoop- 
ing-cough is  only  curable  with  the  rod  ;    and  also  Prof 


*  A  ridiculous  example  of  this  is  to  be  seen  in  the  April,  1889,  number  of 
^z  Journal  of  Mental  Science,  whtre  a  believer  in  his  own  power  to  penetrate 
the  mystery  of  mind  and  crime  gets  sadly  tangled  in  his  own  nets.  A  poor 
hectored  and  starving  workman,  finding  the  sorry  farce  of  life  a  bitter  tragedy, 
kills  his  own  beloved  baby,  rather  than  permit  self  and  child  to  continue  the 
bootless  struggle.  As  if  "  enteric  fever "  or  the  "  span  of  his  arms  "  had 
anything  to  do  with  it !     Such  "  science  "  is  enough  to  make  the  angels  weep. 


THE   MODERN   FRANKENSTEIN.  311 

Ruble's  recommendation  of  the  shower-bath  and  birch-rod 
in  certain  cases  of  chronic  vomiting.  It  is  said  that 
Quinet's  mother  used  to  hire  a  strapping  fellow  to  come 
every  Saturday  and  thoroughly  thrash  all  the  children, 
just  on  general  principles!  The  courts,  judges,  and  experts 
should  act  in  the  same  way  with  the  whole  human  race,  for 
we  are  certainly  all  guilty.  If  the  deterrent  theory  is  the 
right  one,  then  why  do  we  not  execute  children  and  the 
insane  ?  There  is  not  the  least  doubt  that  both  children 
and  very  many  insane  love  their  lives,  and  are  even  more 
keenly  alive  to  the  fear  of  punishment  than  most  criminals, 
and  yet,  hang  a  child,  and  outraged  society  would  justifi- 
ably rise  in  horror  and  mob  sheriff,  jury,  and  judge.  In- 
deed, it  may  with  much  truth  be  urged  that  the  so-called 
deterrent  effect  often  has  a  stimulative  effect.  Dr.  Guy 
tried  to  show  that  the  execution  of  a  lunatic  was  always 
followed  by  a  crop  of  new  murders.  Bramwell  asserted 
that  many  lunatics  relied  on  immunity  from  punishment 
for  crime  on  the  ground  of  their  own  lunacy.  Every  resi- 
dent or  nurse  in  an  insane  asylum  will  acknowledge  that 
there  is  more  deviltry  than  insanity  about  many  of  their 
cases,  and  that  if  the  fist  or  some  equally  serviceable  but 
less  brutal  means  could  be  used  in  return,  much  of  the 
combined  diablerie  and  lunacy  would  disappear.  Human- 
ity, recognizing  the  incompetency  of  the  deterrent  theory, 
has  turned  from  it  with  the  bungling  make-shift  and  stop- 
gap of  insanity,  and  at  the  present  rate  every  villain  will 
soon  be  excused  as  a  crank.*  The  mere  financial  aspect 
of  judicial  murder  is  enough  to  condemn  it.  A  man  com- 
mits a  crime ;  you  spend  thousands  and  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  dollars  to  try  him  (because  of  your  deterrent 
and  punishment-theory  it  is  of  infinite  importance  that  no 

*"  Society,  having  manufactured  its  criminals,  has  scarcely  the  right  to 
treat  them  in  an  angry  spirit  of  malevolence." 


312  THE  MODERN   FRANKENSTEIN. 

mistake  be  made),  and  then  after  this  you  spend  thousands 
more  to  kill  him.  But  his  life  is  certainly  of  some  financial 
value.  It  is  worth  ^14,600  at  the  age  of  21,  according  to 
the  present  average  rate  of  wages  and  probability  of  dura- 
tion of  life.  You  have  spent  several  thousands  of  dollars 
to  procreate  and  raise  him  to  manhood ;  he  is  capable  of 
working  for  you  all  his  life ;  you  have  the  right  of  making 
him  work  for  you ; — and  yet  you  kill  him  in  the  most 
expensive  way  possible.  I  call  that  very  lunacy  of  justice 
and  the  most  egregious  of  follies. 

The  whole  modern  idea  of  punishment  is  a  relic  of  bar- 
barism and  should  be  eradicated  from  jurisprudence,  since 
by  its  very  nature  it  can  neither  be  just  nor  prudent.  * 

The  essence  of  the  English  law  consists  in  the  statement 
that  "  to  establish  a  defense  on  the  ground  of  insanity,  it  must 
be  proved  that  at  the  time  of  committing  the  act  the  accused 
was  laboring  under  such  a  defect  of  reason  from  disease  of 
the  mind  as  not  to  know  the  nature  and  quality  of  the  act 
he  was  doing,  or  if  he  did  know  it,  that  he  did  not  know 
that  what  he  was  doing  was  wrong." 

The  essence  of  my  protest  consists  in  this  : — 

1.  No  human  power  in  a  specific  case  can  decide  as  to 
either  point,  and  it  is  folly  to  pretend  to  do  so.  f 

2.  The  tendency  of  both  theories  is  to  increase  the  evil, 
not  limit  it. 

3.  If  we  do  our  first  duty, — deprive  both  classes  of  liberty 
and  of  power  to  reproduce  their  like,  and  try  to  cure  them, 


*  Lord  Justice  Frey  said  that  "  Punishment  is  an  effort  of  man  to  find  a 
more  exact  relation  between  sin  and  suffering."  I  would  say  that  civilized 
jurisprudence  should  have  nothing  whatever  to  do  or  say  about  sin,  suffering, 
or  the  relation  between  the  two. 

f  It  is  gratifying  to  see  that  a  halt  is  called  by  the  Supreme  Court  of  New 
York.  According  to  a  late  decision  the  expression  of  an  opinion  on  the  part 
of  a  physician  that  a  man  is  insane  on  any  other  ground  than  that  he  is  dan- 
gerous to  himself  or  others  renders  the  physician  liable  to  a  suit  for  damages. 


THE   MODERN    FRANKENSTEIN.  313 

it  doesn't  make  a  fig's  difference  which  theory  is  right,  be- 
cause both  must  then  be  ignored.  The  only  sensible  posi- 
tion is  simply  this  :  when  a  person  either  by  crime  or 
incapacity  to  care  for  himself  has  forfeited  his  right  to  free- 
dom, then  the  people  must  take  that  freedom  away.  We 
have  no  earthly  right  to  kill  in  return  for  crime  done.  We 
should  reorganize  the  treatment  of  criminals  and  lunatics 
upon  the  sole  principles  of  protection  of  the  community  and 
reformation  of  the  law-breaker  and  mind-breaker,  to  the 
utter  exclusion  of  the  idea  of  punishment  or  of  deterring 
others, — the  whole  upon  the  most  economic  basis  possible. 
Protection,  reformation,  economy  ;  it  is  self-evident  that 
these  should  be  the  ideals  aimed  at ;  but  it  is  just  as  indubi- 
table that  present  methods,  except  bunglingly  and  partially, 
neither  aim  at  nor  secure  either,  but  instead  do  often  seem 
as  if  devised  to  secure  the  reverse.  They  certainly  do  not 
protect  the  community  in  hardly  any  imaginable  way  ;  they 
exaggerate  and  create  both  crime  and  lunacy,  and  no  dozen 
of  prize  boodler  aldermen  could  have  invented  a  more  ex- 
pensive system  of  not  doing  justice  and  of  fleecing  the  tax- 
payer. As  illustrative  of  the  financial  aspect :  it  is  costing 
Great  Britain  something  like  twenty  millions  of  dollars  a 
year  to  care  for  her  insane,  and  the  amount  will  rise  to  thirty 
millions  within  ten  years.  It  is  simply  impossible  to  esti- 
mate the  bills  of  the  police,  the  judge,  and  the  jailer  in  the 
cause  of  crime. 

As  to  social  protection,  every  one  knows  it  is  a  farce  only 
equaled  by  the  pretense  that  it  does  protect.  In  the  recoil 
from  the  old  heathen  judicial  murder,  and  in  lacrimose 
snivel,  we  adjudge  most  criminals  lunatics,  or  if  we  can't  do 
that,  we  put  them  in  a  pandemonium  that,  with  caustic 
malevolence,  we  call  a  penitentiary,  and  a  little  later,  with 
full  powers  of  reproducing  their  like,  and  with  hate,  not 
penitence,  in  their  hearts,  we  let  them  slip  back  into  the 
bosom  of  the  community,  by  the  mysterious  fatuity  of  a 


314  THE   MODERN   FRANKENSTEIN. 

discharge  from  an  asylum-superintendent  overburdened 
with  his  load,  or  a  pardon  by  a  possible  political  bummer 
miscalled  a  Governor,  Then  if  Dean  Swift  were  turned 
deity  he  could  not  have  instituted  a  more  sardonically  bitter 
stroke  than  that  now  perpetrated  by  the  greatest  State  of 
our  civilized  and  Christian  America :  that  of  supporting  in 
enforced  idleness  her  malefactors  who  beg  for  work,  and 
who  from  want  of  it  are  going  mad  at  the  rate  of  37  in  the 
past  six  months. 

If  we  turn  to  the  idea  of  reformation  a  still  more  remark- 
able spectacle  is  offered  us.  So  far  as  the  "  penitentiary  " 
is  concerned,  it  is  more  apt  to  make  everybody  else  peni- 
tent than  the  criminal.  Even  pretense  at  reformation  has 
long  ago  passed  into  a  joke  of  the  chaplain,  and  if,  while 
working  out  his  sentence,  the  poor  devil  of  a  criminal  do  not 
lose  the  last  ray  of  morality  and  hopefulness,  it  is  no  fault  of 
the  system.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  we  look  for  a  therapeutic 
zeal  commensurate  with  the  dogmatism  of  the  school  that 
holds  mental  diseases  to  be  wholly  physical,  we  are  astounded 
to  find  that  cure  *  and  cause  are  things  of  little  interest.  It 
is  no  less  an  authority  than  Tuke  that  says  f  "  we  seek  in 
vain  in  our  asylums  for  any  evidence  ofthe  systematic  inquiry 
into  the  treatment  of  these  conditions.  The  public  thinks 
that  madness  can  be  eliminated  by  entertainment,  and  the 
superintendent  is  bound  to  work  up  to  this  theory.  These 
great  establishments,  instead  of  developing  into  great 
hospitals  for  the  cure  of  disease,  have  done  little  more  than 
maintain  a  high  character  as  model  lodging  houses  for  the 
insane."     This  indictment  is  nailed  with  the  fearful  charge 


*  In  1870  Sir  Arthur  Mitchell  found  that  out  of  1297  patients  admitted  into 
Scottish  asylums  in  1858,  474  died  in  the  asylums,  412  were  then  alive  as 
chronic  lunatics,  and  411  had  died,  or  were  alive,  sane.  This  is  a  worse  mor- 
tality than  hydrophobia. 

f  Nineteenth  Century,  April,  1889. 


THE   MODERN   FRANKENSTEIN.  315 

that  but  one  contribution  to  the  pathology  or  therapeutics 
of  insanity  worthy  to  be  called  scientific  has  appeared  as  an 
offset  or  rival  to  the  giant  strides  of  progress  in  every  other 
department  of  science  and  medicine.  In  fact,  what 
ingenuity  could  devise  a  better  method  of  making,  exagger- 
ating, and  confirming  madness  than  to  huddle  hundreds  and 
thousands  together  suspected  or  convicted  of  mental 
defect  ?  That  this  is  so,  even  Tuke  admits,  and  says 
further:  "What  every  case  demands  as  the  primary  condi- 
tion of  recovery  is  separate  and  individual  treatment  and 
consideration."  * 

In  olden  times  the  pianoforte-tuners  used  to  have  an 
octave  in  which  all  the  dissonances  and  discords  of  the 
whole  keyboard  were  gathered  that  they  didn't  know  how 
to  distribute  and  harmonize.  They  called  this  octave  "  the 
Devil,"  and  the  player,  of  course,  had  to  avoid  it  as  much 
as  possible,  or  touch  it  very  gingerly. 

The  pith  of  the  whole  matter  consists  in  the  fact  that  in 
our  life  the  sociological  tuner  cannot  confine  his  "  Devil  " 
within  the  limits  of  one  octave.  By  dint  of  an  unmorality 
that  is  only  equaled  by  the  development  of  sly  cunning, 
the  modern  intellect  has  got  ahead  of  the  antique  conscience 
and  is  fast  leaving  criminal  jurisprudence  as  a  curiosity  of 
"  ye  olden  time."  That  is  to  say,  like  the  modern  piano- 
tuner,  we  have,  so  far  as  true  criminality  is  concerned,  suc- 
ceeded admirably  in  distributing  "  the  devil  "  throughout 
the  whole  seven  octaves  of  society.  But  as  regards  lunacy, 
the  old  plan  of  the  single  octave  has  been  rigidly  adhered 
to  with  the  inevitable  result  that  the  devil  is  overrunning 
his  octave  and  threatening  to  absorb  a  big  part  of  the  key- 
board. In  1879  Professor  von  Krafft-Ebing,  the  well- 
known  alienist,  estimated  that  in  the  most  civilized  peoples 


*  Walford  says  the  mortality  in  public  institutions  is  ten  times  as  great  as 
the  general  mortality. 


3l6  THE   MODERN   FRANKENSTEIN. 

there  was  one  insane  person  to  every  500  of  the  popula- 
tion. More  recent  statistics  show  the  proportion  to  be 
more  nearly  one  to  every  300  or  400.  All  statisticians  are 
agreed  that  the  greater  the  civilization,  the  higher  the  ratio 
of  the  insane,  and  that  without  exception  the  increase  is  far 
higher  than  that  of  the  population.  *  In  less  than  a  dozen 
modern  nations  there  are  to-day  about  a  million  lunatics. 
While  the  general  population  doubles,  the  number  of  the 
insane  increases  three-fold  or  four-fold.  The  number  is 
kept  much  lower  by  what  may  be  called  the  obverse  of  the 
medal,  the  fact  of  suicide,  that  is  also  growing  three  or 
four  times  faster  than  population.  The  number  of  idiots, 
blind,  deaf-mutes,  and  criminals,  is  likewise  increasing  more 
rapidly  than  the  people  who  have  to  support  and  care  for 
them.  We  have  now  probably  six  or  seven,  perhaps  eight, 
hundred  thousand  such  folk  as  one  of  our  burdens  in  this 
country. 

In  view  of  the  rapidly  increasing  load,  would  it  not  be 
advisableto  remodel  our  penal  laws  and  those  regulating 
the  treatment  of  lunatics  in  some  way  that  shall  accomplish 
the  decrease  and  not  the  increase  of  these  classes  ?  Would 
not  this  end  be  sought  more  rationally  by  the  following 
means : — 

1,  The  complete  eradication  from  legislation  and  juris- 
prudence of  all  ideas  of  punishment  and  of  the  deterrent 
effect  of  the  same,  sentence  to  loss  of  freedom  being  given 
upon  certain  proof  either  of  criminal  act  or  incapacity  of 
self-support  or  self-control. 

2.  The  establishment  of  a  nonpolitical,  highly  paid 
State  Board  of  Control  of  the  highest  Medical,  Legal,  and 


*  In  Great  Britain  the  average  annual  increase  of  lunatics  in  asylums  has 
been  1580,  and  the  gross  registered  increase  45,881.  In  Paris  the  number  in 
1872  was  one  lunatic  to  121 2  of  the  population.  In  1886  the  proportion  was 
one  to  1091. 


THE   MODERN   FRANKENSTEIN.  317 

Administrative  ability,  which  shall  have  charge  of  the  com- 
bined Defective,  Dependent,  and  Delinquent  classes,  the 
discharging  or  pardoning  power  to  reside  in  this  Board 
alone. 

3.  The  Treatment  of  these  classes  to  be  organized  so 
far  as  possible  upon  an  economic  basis,  but  always  with  the 
sublime  and  steady  purpose  of  Cure  in  view. 

4.  The  Protection  of  the  Community,  and  the  safe- 
guarding of  the  future  against  the  inheritance  of  criminal 
and  unsound  taint,  by  the  euthanasia  of  idiots,  monstrosi- 
ties, etc.,  the  interdiction  of  marriage  of  paupers,  and  of  the 
physically  unsound,  and  by  the  asexualization  of  the  law- 
breaker and  the  mentally  unsound. 

The  thoughts  underlying  this  writing  might  be  summar- 
ized as  follows: — 

1.  The  unvarying  testimony  of  statisticians  and  students 
of  sociology  is  that  the  defective,  dependent,  and  delin- 
quent classes  and  suicide,  as  a  whole,  are,  in  all  civilized  na- 
tions, steadily  and  continuously  increasing  much  faster  than 
the  increase  of  the  communities  supporting  them ;  this 
shows  that  something  is  radically  wrong  as  to  the  causes 
and  the  societies  producing  these  classes ;  it  is,  indeed,  a 
wrong  that  cannot  fail  in  time  to  bring  society  to  a  very 
literal  reductio  ad  absurdum, — seu  ad  lunaticinn. 

2.  Though  not  wholly,  this  wrong  is  found  to  consist 
chiefly  in  the  vicious  structure  of  society,  economically 
and  morally,  in  a  perniciousness  of  ideal  and  custom  that 
can  but  yield  a  fruitage  of  criminality  and  mental  wreckage. 

3.  The  half  conscious,  half-smothered  feeling  of  this 
communal  responsibility,  cooperating  with  the  criminal's 
efforts  by  legal  technicality  and  by  medical  aid,  has  served 
to  the  same  end  by  legalizing  and  excusing  crime  in  the 
community,  or  by  covering  it  with  the  cloak  of  insanity. 

4.  The  aid  rendered  by  a  certain  school  of  medical 
writers  and  experts  to  this  morbid  tendency  has  been  based 


3i8  THE   MODERN    FRANKENSTEIN. 

upon  the  theory  that  crime  and  mental  disease  are  simply 
the  effects  of  criminal  or  cerebral  atypism  and  brain-dis- 
ease, and  therefore  anatomically  necessitated.  This  theory 
is  not  only  not  proved,  but  is  disproved  by  a  number  of  un- 
answerable facts  and  considerations,  and  is  a  stultifying 
argument  to  use  by  those  whose  field  of  medical  study  has 
shown  the  least  progress,  and  in  which  therapeutics  has 
hardly  entered. 

5.  Our  legal  sentences  should  be  divested  of  all  thought 
of  punishment  or  of  deterrent  effects,  the  asylum  and  peni- 
tentiary combined  and  put  under  one  management,  the 
clinical  examination  and  study  of  the  pathogenesis  of  these 
conditions  furthered,  and  all  with  the  sole  end  of  cure  and 
of  prophylaxis. 

To  hasten  the  flow  of  dreary  hours  a  gifted  woman  once 
wrote  a  gruesome  tale  of  how  a  cunning  but  short-sighted 
delver  and  experimenter  in  life's  mysterious  genesis  got 
together  many  old  and  foul  gatherings  from  cemetery  and 
from  dissection-room,  and  created  a  living  monster  of 
wonderful  growth  and  power,  but  without  a  touch  or  breath 
or  divinity.  Love  and  sympathy  of  a  certain  kind  it 
indeed  sought  and  hungered  for,  but  the  miserable  wretch 
was  shunned  by  all.  It  soon  became  conscious  of  its  own 
moral  deformity  and  hideousness,  and  in  detestation  of  its 
own  life  it  came  to  hate  the  author  of  its  being.  Growing 
ever  more  powerful,  it  restlessly  and  viciously  plotted  the 
injury  and  ruin  of  its  unfortunate  creator. 


DREAMS,  SLEEP,  AND  CONSCIOUSNESS.* 

A  PSYCHOLOGIC  STUDY. 

I.  Prefatory. — The  design  of  this  paper  is  to  study  the 
nature  of  consciousness  and  of  its  origin,  from  the  facts  of 
sleep  and  dreams.  But  although  one's  own  dreams  are 
vague  and  elusive,  those  of  another  person  must  be  par- 
ticularly so ;  it  therefore  seems  necessary  to  depend  mainly 
upon  one's  own  dreams  for  data.  Hence  the  apparent 
egotism  of  the  references  to  follow. 

The  facts  supposed  to  be  known  are,  some  of  them,  as 
follows : — A  sensory,  afferent,  or  centripetal  nerve  is  one 
that  conveys  an  impulse  from  an  outlying  or  peripheral 
point  toward  the  spinal  cord  and  brain.  In  some  gang- 
lionic center  it  becomes  an  efferent,  centrifugal,  or  motor 
impulse,  that  is  conveyed  by  the  appropriate  nerve  to  the 
muscles  of  the  part  first  stimulated,  and  this  part  is  accord- 
ingly moved  or  becomes  otherwise  functional.  Stimulus 
of  the  nerve  leading  from  the  skin,  at  any  point  in  its 
course,  produces  the  same  motion,  and  an  electrode,  thrust 
into  the  cortical  center,  also  produces  it.  But  the  action  of 
this  center  is  also  directed  by  the  consciousness  or  will ; 
we  can  move  the  foot  without  its  having  been  hurt.  Con- 
sequently, commissural,  or  associate  fibers,  must  proceed 
from  the  motor  center  to  the  organ  of  consciousness  to 
convey  its  impulses  to  this  organ,  and  yet  others  to  convey 
mandates  from  consciousness  to  the  motor  center.  It  is 
the  same  with  every  sense-center ;    it  must  have  afferent 


*  Published  in  The  Open  Court  of  January  24  and  31,  1 5 
319 


320  DREAMS,   SLEEP,   AND   CONSCIOUSNESS. 

and  efferent  fibers,  uniting  it  with  the  higher  center  of 
consciousness.  These  facts  necessitate  a  localization  of  the 
organ  of  consciousness.  Such  cases  as  "  The  American 
Crowbar  Case,"  and  a  thousand  observations  in  vivisection 
and  pathology,  show  that  this  organ  is  located  in  the  frontal 
lobes  of  the  brain.  The  theory  of  sleep  and  dreams  now 
assumed  is  that  in  sleep  all  the  subordinate  centers  of 
sensation  and  motion  are  nonfunctional,  neither  influencing 
the  activities  of  the  organ  of  consciousness,  nor  influenced 
by  it,  and  that  dreaming  is  the  mimic  play  of  the  organ  of 
consciousness  without  the  stimulus,  the  inhibition,  or  the 
data — material — habitually  furnished  by  the  subordinate 
centers. 

II.  What  Is  Sleep  ? — So  long  as  physiologists  have  not 
accurately  determined  the  physiological  conditions  of  sleep, 
we  cannot  be  dogmatic  in  our  definitions.  But  whatever 
else  it  may  be,  it  is  essentially  a  condition  of  rest.  Our 
waking  life  is  characterized  as  a  life  of  action,  that  is,  of  the 
outlay  of  force.  We  picture  to  ourselves  the  great  motor 
centers  of  the  brain  and  cord  as  undoubtedly  recouping 
themselves,  even  during  waking  activity,  from  the  great 
manufactory  of  force,  the  digestive  and  assimilative  system  ; 
but  it  is  also  necessary  to  suppose  that,  during  waking,  we 
are,  as  it  were,  "  running  down,"  trenching  closer  and 
closer  upon  both  the  store  in  reserve  and  the  power  of 
ready  manufacture,  so  that  a  time  at  last  arrives  when  all 
expenditure  must  cease  and  the  process  of  restorage  and 
restoration  must  have  sole  sway.  Nervous  phenomena  are 
plainly  phenomena  of  the  discharge,  guidance,  and  distribu- 
tion of  force.  Functional  activity  everywhere  exhausts, 
and  necessitates  periods  of  rest,  regeneration,  and  restorage. 
It  is  this  dynamic  aspect  of  the  question  that  is  certain  and 
suggestive.  Sleep  may  be  thus  partly  defined  as  the 
cessation  of  the  functional  activities  of  the  sensory  and 
motor  centers  that  habitually  consist  in  the  reception  or 


DREAMS,   SLEEP,   AND  CONSCIOUSNESS.  321 

the  discharge  of  force.  Organs,  whether  of  motion,  sensa- 
tion, or  coordination,  are  not  now  pushed  into  action  by 
the  messages  of  command  from  the  resting  or  sleeping 
centers.  I  am  aware  that  this  does  not  account  for  the 
difference  that  undoubtedly  exists  between  the  rest  of 
sleep  and  that  of  waking.  There  is,  of  course,  some 
mystery  here,  though  I  do  not  believe  it  a  profound  one. 
When  awake,  whether  resting  or  the  origin  of  muscular 
contractions,  a  motor  center  is  probably  the  source  of 
continuous  discharge.  All  muscles  have  tone,  many  are 
required  to  be  persistently  innervated,  and  any  or  all  may 
instantly  require  power.  But  in  sleep  the  function  of 
regeneration  of  nerve-force  predominates  over  the  discharg- 
ing function.  One  organ  cannot  at  the  same  moment 
perform  two  totally  different  acts  or  functions  equally  well, 
and  hence  one  must  be  paramount.  Now,  unless  discharg- 
ing, a  center  cannot  affect  either  muscles  or  consciousness. 
If  it  do  not  affect  muscles,  it  rests.  If  in  addition  it  do 
not  affect  consciousness,  it  sleeps.  When,  in  all  motor 
and  sensory  centers  the  regeneration  or  restorage  function 
predominates  over  the  discharging  function,  and  when, 
therefore,  the  organ  of  consciousness  receives  from  them 
no  discharges,  we  have  the  general  condition  of  sleep. 
Permanent  predominant  discharging  constitutes  the  waking 
condition  of  centers,  single  or  general ;  permanent  pre- 
dominant regeneration  of  nerve-force  constitutes  sleep.  In 
this,  as  in  many  other  respects,  it  is  highly  interesting  to 
find,  as  has  lately  been  done,*  that  the  renal  secretion  of 
the  sleeping-hours  is  distinctly  stimulant  and  convulsivant, 
while  that  of  the  waking-hours  is  soporific  and  narcotic. 
We  thus  see  that  by  some  not-understood  method  nature 
eliminates  during  wakefulness  the  material  of  the  blood 
that  would,  if  kept  in  it,  dull  the  keen  edge  of  action, 


*  Lefons  stir  les  auto-intoxicanis  dans  les  maladies.     Par  Ch.  Bouchard. 
28 


322  DREAMS,   SLEEP,   AND   CONSCIOUSNESS. 

whilst,  on  the  other  hand,  there  is  during  sleep,  strained 
out  of  it,  material  that  would  spur  the  centers  into  wakeful 
activity.     This  fact  is  very  suggestive.* 

III.  What  Is  Consciousness  ? — A  simple  reflex  act  is 
one  that  proceeds  from  a  single  stimulus  without  the  impli- 
cation of  other  possibly-related  centers.  The  subsidiary 
center  intermediating  the  motor  response  is  sufficient  to 
effect  the  objects  of  the  act.  If  the  act  is  more  than  reflex, 
if  more  than  one  center  has  to  intermediate  the  complex 
act,  the  impulse  must  proceed  from  a  higher  coordinating 
focus  that  uses  the  subordinate  centers  as  its  media  or 
instruments.  The  center  of  a  simple  reflex  act  may  be 
called  presentative,  that  or  those  of  others  placed  over 
them,  representative.  Consciousness  may  tentatively  be 
considered  as  the  single  and  highest  coordinating  focus 
of  all  the  representative  centers,  or  the  unique  rerepre- 
sentative  one.  Hither  proceed  the  centripetal  lines  of 
stimuli  from  all  points  of  the  periphery.  But  a  moment's 
consideration  shows  us  it  is  not  only  a  focus,  and  one 
exercising  a  rerepresentative  function  alone.  The  primary 
object  of  all  stimulation  is  reaction;  hence,  like  all  its  sub- 
ordinates, it  is  also,  and  in  fact  largely,  directional,  execu- 
tive, governmental.  In  sleep  the  subordinate  or  repre- 
sentative centers  are  not  functional,  no  peripheral  stimulus 
reaches  it,  and  it  issues  no  orders  to  underlying  centers  of 
motion. 

IV.  Does  Consciousness  Sleep? — Sometimes  we  have 
dreams  in  sleeping,  sometimes  we  do  not.  Strict  exami- 
nation of  our  waking  consciousness  shows  it  is  not  a  matter 
of  memory;  we  do  not  dream  all  the  time  when  asleep; 


*  It  is  also  curious  to  find  the  popular  belief  that  relatively  more  births 
occur  in  the  small  hours  of  the  night  is  scientifically  true.  See  Dr.  Swayne  in 
Brislol  Medico-Chirurgical Journal,  September,  1 888,  One  wonders  whether 
the  common  belief  that  more  deaths  occur  in  these  hours  is  also  true. 


DREAMS,  SLEEP,  AND  CONSCIOUSNESS.  323 

we  sometimes  forget  our  dreams.  Upon  waking,  we 
sometimes  clearly  remember  our  dreams,  at  other  times 
our  memory  is  confused ;  or,  again,  we  are  only  certain 
that  we  have  dreamed,  but  without  a  trace  of  what  it  is  we 
dreamed  ;  and,  lastly,  we  are  often  perfectly  sure  we  had  no 
dreams.  Moreover,  as  all  vital  functions  must  have  their 
rhythmical  periods  of  rest,  even  the  heart  and  lungs  being 
no  exception,  so  the  organ  of  consciousness  must  sleep. 
In  this  fact  lies  the  explanation  of  what  must  be  considered 
the  pathologic  character  of  the  consciousness  of  a  vivid 
and  continuous  dreamer.  An  organ  of  consciousness,  if 
kept  by  its  own  hyperesthesia,  or  by  the  fevers  and  abnor- 
malities of  its  subordinate  centers,  or  by  the  unremitting 
bombardment  of  multiform  sense-stimulation,  in  a  condi- 
tion of  unrest,  must  exercise  an  irregular  and  poor  waking 
control  of  the  body.  If  the  general  never  slept,  his  army 
would  soon  sleep — the  sleep  of  the  vanquished.  Forced 
wakefulness  was  the  most  horrible  of  ancient  tortures.  The 
physician  well  knows  that  his  prognosis  often  depends  upon 
the  effect  of  his  hypnotic. 

V.  The  Difference  Between  the  Dreaming  and  the 
Waking  Consciousness. — The  waking  consciousness,  as 
we  have  seen,  is  the  highest  unifying  center  of  the  whole 
organism.  It  is  the  focus  wherein  memories  of  all  past 
experiences  are  correlated  with  all  present  stimuli  or 
motives,  and  whence  the  command  is  given  that  is  best  to 
subserve  the  preservation  of  the  organism.  The  dreaming 
consciousness,*  in  the  first  place,  is  evidently  deprived  of 
the  great  body  of  present  incitants  to  action ;  all  stimuli 
are    wanting,   all    subordinate    centers    are    functionless. 


*  Unless  specified,  and  especially  now,  I  mean  by  the  dreaming  conscious- 
ness, the  placidly,  reflectively,  dreaming  one, — not  that  peculiar  one  in  which 
the  suffering,  struggling  consciousness  is  vehemently  endeavoring  to  arouse 
subordinate  centers, — a  condition  strangely  called  "  nightmare." 


324  DREAMS,  SLEEP,  AND   CONSCIOUSNESS. 

What  material  has  it  to  work  upon  ?  From  what  data 
must  it  now  proceed  ?  Plainly,  those  of  memory  only. 
But  in  dreams  it  is  a  striking  fact  that  remembered  things 
are  not  orderly,  they  do  not  correspond  to  reality,  but  are 
fantastic  and  untrustworthy.  Why,  then,  does  the  waking 
and  sleeping  memory  differ  in  such  a  highly  important 
matter  as  correspondence  with  reality  ?  Evidently  because 
in  sleep  the  control  of  reality  is  not  present ;  because 
memory  is  a  function  of  subordinate  centers  as  well  as  of 
consciousness.  No  more  satisfactory  conception  of  mem- 
ory can  be  given  than  that  its  physical  basis  consists 
in  a  faint  reproduction  of  the  same  ganglionic  discharges 
that  took  place  in  full  force  at  the  time  of  the  origi- 
nal sensation  or  action.  If,  therefore,  the  subordinate 
sensori-motor  centers  are  not  discharging  toward  the 
consciousness-center,  all  that  is  left  in  this  center  is  the 
memory  of  a  memory , — and,  in  fact,  such  a  designation  alone 
conveys  a  conception  of  the  unreal  and  ghost-like  nature 
of  the  memory  of  the  dreaming  consciousness.  This  cen- 
ter in  dreaming  acts  weakly  and  faintly  in  the  same  way 
that  it  formerly  acted  strongly  when  fed  by  the  full  forces 
of  its  waking  subordinates.  But  in  sleeping  it  remains 
without  the  control  of  reality,  which  is  always  logical  or 
obedient  to  the  law  of  causality  ;  and  hence,  in  so  acting, 
it  must  be  illogic  and  fantastic. 

VI.  Origin  and  Nature  of  the  Waking  Consciousness. 
— The  organ  of  consciousness  is  single,  specialized,  and 
localized.  Dreams  show  us  that  while  the  habitual  sensori- 
motor functions  and  all  stimuli  are  absent,  consciousness 
may  be  intensely  active.  Its  essential  functions  are  pre- 
served in  sleep,  and  this,  were  it  a  cerebrally  diffused  organ, 
would  be  impossible.  From  of  old  consciousness  has  been 
compared  to  the  constriction  of  an  hour-glass  through 
which  the  sand  must  pass  grain  by  grain.  But  one  train 
of  ideas  can  occupy  consciousness   at  one  time,  and  it  is 


DREAMS,   SLEEP,   AND   CONSCIOUSNESS.  325 

always  a  train,  a  line,  a  succession  of  single  stimuli,  to 
which  it  reacts.  This  is  equivalent  to  saying  that  it  reacts 
to  the  strongest  stimulus  presented  at  any  one  instant. 
This  is  its  simple  form,  best  illustrated  in  the  conscious- 
ness of  the  dog,  where  it  is  always  and,  as  it  were,  mechani- 
cally responsive  to  the  presented  object.  However 
obedient  and  engrossed  by  a  duty  or  demand  upon  its 
attention,  let  there  suddenly  appear  another  stimulus, — 
another  dog,  a  physiological  need,  etc., — and  previous  ob- 
jects of  attention  are,  as  it  were,  annihilated  in  the  total 
engrossment  of  consciousness  with  the  new  object.  It  is 
the  same  with  almost  all  animals.  Remembrance  of  past 
danger  in  all  hunted  animals  keeps  consciousness  keenly 
alert  to  the  signs  of  danger,  so  that  the  appearance,  even 
the  thought,  of  such  signs  at  once  floods  the  organ  of 
consciousness  with  powerful  stimuli,  to  the  exclusion  of 
all  others.  Indeed,  it  does  not  seem  absurd  to  suspect 
that  the  escape  from  danger  has  been  the  strongest  factor 
in  the  development  of  consciousness.  It  would  certainly 
emphasize  the  quality  or  ability  of  differentiating  self  as  the 
object  of  consciousness,  and  setting  it  clearly  forth  as  the 
chief  object  of  solicitude.  An  animal  rises  in  the  scale  of 
intelligence  just  in  proportion  as  it  is  capable  of  preserving 
clear  memories  of  past  experiences,  individual  or  racial, 
and  of  fusing  these  with  the  present  stimulus  so  that  the 
resultant  action  shall  most  successfully  secure  the  preser- 
vation of  himself  and  his  species.  The  essence  of  the 
matter  consists  in  this  fusing  process,  and  the  conscious- 
ness of  man  differs  in  no  essential  characteristic  from  that 
of  animals  except  that,  at  the  instant  of  fusing,  a  wider 
sweep  of  possible  results,  a  more  reflective  weighing  of 
more  diverse  experiences  and  complex  motives,  enters  into 
the  count.  Extension  of  the  weighing  time,  complexity 
of  the  pondered  objects,  and  delicacy  of  the  balancing 
mechanism — these  are  but  differing  degrees  of  the  same 


326  DREAMS,  SLEEP,   AND  CONSCIOUSNESS. 

powers  that  belong  to  both  alike.  The  first  to  be  evolved 
must  have  been  the  extension  of  the  weighing  time.  The 
mechanical  jumping  from  one  presented  object  to  another 
with  unpondering  rapidity  is  naive  but  primitive.  That 
the  serpent  in  all  antiquity  has  been  worshiped  as  the 
wisest  of  animals,  may  have  been  because  we  catch  in  the 
restrained  glitter  of  his  eye  the  ability  to  ponder  conflicting 
motives  and  stimuli  longer  than  others.  Action  does  not 
follow  stimulus  with  the  celerity  of  a  mechanical  force.  In 
the  struggle  for  existence,  that  animal  would  rise  above 
his  mates  which,  other  things  being  equal,  could  at  will 
prolong  the  time  between  the  reception  of  competing 
stimuli  and  the  resulting  action.  With  this  ability  would 
go,  pan  passu,  the  ability  to  handle  more  varied  stimuli  and 
motives.  Delicacy  of  equilibration  of  multiform  forces 
held  long  in  suspense  is  only  possible  to  the  highest 
human  consciousness  and  is  its  superb  characteristic* 
Thus,  to  hold  in  suspense  many  competing  stimuli,  and 
weigh  them  accurately,  would  require  a  large  and  com- 
plexly organized  center  such  as  the  frontal  lobes,  whose 
human  development  has  been  exactly  proportional  to  the 
growth  of  intelligence.  After  a  period  of  imaginative 
excitement  or  creative  intellectual  work  I  have  a  sense  of 
constriction  and  tension  in  the  frontal  lobes,  and  especially 
of  the  right  side.f 


*  Discriminative  attention  is  a  human  faculty,  and  appears  to  be  either  a 
selective  receptivity  of  the  organ  of  consciousness,  an  exclusive  reception  by 
it  of  one  kind  of  stimulus,  or  the  exclusive  direction  of  its  innervation  upon  a 
single  or  a  special  set  of  subordinate  motor  centers. 

f  Still  another  indication  is  the  fact,  daily  observed  by  every  physician,  that 
eye-strain  is  a  frequent  and  persistent  cause  of  frontal  headaches.  It  may  be 
worth  noting  that,  like  the  center  of  articulate  speech,  the  organ  of  conscious- 
ness must,  by  its  very  nature,  be  a  single  organ.  Bilateral  symmetry  is  the  law 
in  most  other  functions  of  the  body  and  its  nervous  mechanism.  Speaking 
evolutionally,  articulate  speech  is  an  accidental  after- thought,  and  so  must  be 


DREAMS,  SLEEP,  AND   CONSCIOUSNESS.  327 

VII.  Origin  and  Nature  of  the  Dreaming  Conscious- 
ness.— It  is  of  the  very  nature  of  the  waking  conscious- 
ness that  it  must  always  be  responsive  to  some  stimulus  ; 
that  it  must  be  equally  responsive  to  either  of  the  many 
and  varied  possible  stimuli ;  and,  lastly,  that  it  must  re- 
spond to  a  stimulus  of  low  intensity,  however  delicate  it 
maybe.  It  is  this  delicacy  of  action  that  I  wish  to  empha- 
size. Irritation  at  extreme  or  unnecessary  noises ;  esthetic 
pain  at  crude  and  loud  colors ;  sensitiveness  to  differences 
of  stimulus  of  any  kind, — these  distinguish  the  highly  organ- 
ized personality.  There  is  no  bolometer  or  other  instrument 
of  precision  delicate  enough  to  measure  the  inconceivable 
minuteness  of  the  force  that  is  sufficient  to  influence  con- 
sciousness. This  quality  proves  of  profound  service  in 
sleep.  When  the  animal  or  man  lies  down  to  sleep,  I  think 
that,  at  first,  consciousness  also  sleeps,  since  to  some  extent  it 
also  must  yield  obedience  to  the  general  law  of  the  rhythm 
and  rest.  When  sleep  is  permitted,  it  is  because  it  is  safe 
to  permit  it.  Hence  sleep  may  at  first  be  dreamless  with 
less  danger  to  the  organism.  But,  since  the  struggle  for 
existence  began,  the  sleeper  has  needed  a  sentinel  to  stand 
watch  over  him,  and  be  on  the  alert  for  any  one  of  his 
thousand  enemies.  When  one  thinks  of  the  manifold  agen- 
cies of  harm,  such  as  fire,  robbers,  impure  air,  malposition 
of  the  body,  too  great  heat  or  cold,  physiologic  needs  or 
pathologic  conditions,  etc.,  etc.,  to  which  the  best  pro- 
located  upon  one  side  or  the  other  of  the  two-sided  brain.  Upon  which  side 
is  not  only  not  invariable,  but  it  is  even  found  to  follow — or  cause  ? — the  educa- 
tion of  the  opposite  hand  for  intellectual  work.  In  a  recent  very  interesting 
case  the  speech-center  was  proved  to  be  localized  upon  the  left  side,  because, 
though  the  man  was  left-handed  for  everything  else,  the  one  intellectual  act  of 
writing  was  done  with  the  right  hand.  Arguing  from  analogy,  it  might  be 
supposed  that  the  organ  of  consciousness  for  right-handed  people  would  be 
found  in  the  left  frontal  lobe,  since  the  right  hand  is  the  one  most  generally 
used  for  intellectual  things,  as  writing,  gesturing,  etc.  There  are  other  con- 
siderations that  would  argue  the  reverse. 


3*8  DREAMS,  SLEEP,  AND  CONSCIOUSNESS. 

tected  and  most  civilized  people  are  liable,  and  how  inse- 
curely most  of  us  sleep, — and  when  we  add  to  all  these  all 
the  dangers  and  enemies  and  perplexities  of  the  savage  or 
the  higher  animals,  we  can  then  vividly  realize  how  neces- 
sary such  a  sentinel  is  for  the  preservation  of  the  organism 
and  the  species.  That  the  period  of  the  exhaustion  of 
consciousness  is  more  brief,  that  its  resumption  of  function 
would  be  more  speedy,  than  with  other  organs,  goes  with- 
out saying,  and  especially  since  its  function  is  mainly  equi- 
librational,  directional,  mirror-like,  rerepresentative, — not 
creative,  remolding,  motor,  or  representative.  I  am  cer- 
tain that  my  dreams  grow  more  vivid  toward  the  time  of 
awaking,  just  as  I  have  no  dreams  in  the  first  hours  of  sleep. 
My  own  dreams  also  show  plainly  the  sentry-like  function 
of  the  dreaming  consciousness.  I  am  very  sensitive  to 
malposition  of  the  body  in  sleep.  Pressure  upon  a  nerve- 
trunk  is  with  me  extremely  prone  to  produce  the  phenom- 
enon popularly  known  as  "  sleep  "  of  a  limb.  For  this 
reason  I  sleep  upon  a  hard  bed,  and  I  can  sleep  in  but  one 
position,  upon  my  back,  without  pillow  and  without  flexion 
of  any  limb.  If  by  accident  these  conditions  are  broken 
during  sleep,  I  have  as  a  result  a  peculiar  experience  that 
has  happened  to  me  repeatedly  and  all  through  my  life. 
My  dream  at  first  takes  on  a  tinge  of  impending  danger 
until  I  become  aware  that  I  must  awaken  myself.  The 
labor  of  doing  this  is  both  powerful  and  painful.  I  am 
truly  conscious  of  my  effort,  of  a  struggle  with  my  dormant 
members.  The  energy  spent  in  endeavoring  to  arouse  my- 
self is  tremendous.  At  first  I  can  perhaps  move  but  one 
finger,  then  I  can  bring  other  fingers  into  the  control  of  the 
will,  finally  the  alternate  flexions  and  extensions  include 
the  hand,  and  I  may  have  to  wave  and  thrash  the  hand  and 
arm  for  some  time  before  arousing  a  sufficient  overflow  of 
stimulus  to  reach  other  motor  centers  and  spur  into  the 
condition  of  "  awake  "  all  the  sensory  and  motor  centers  of 


DREAMS,  SLEEP,  AND  CONSCIOUSNESS.  329 

the  body.  Sometimes  the  head  is  the  movable  part,  and  this 
is  rotated  from  side  to  side  with  ever-increasing  extent  and 
quickness,  until  the  general  arousing  is  attained.  All  this 
is  to  me  an  indication  of  the  sentinel  function  of  conscious- 
ness during  sleep,  of  its  quick  response  to  slight  stimuli,  of 
its  directional  control  of  subordinate  and  representative 
centers  directly  intermediating  muscular  action.  It  also 
shows  that  it  is  executive  only  through  its  agents.  Its  mo- 
tor-conimissural  fibers  must  end  in  the  direct  motor-centers 
about  the  fissure  of  Rolando.  But  it  also  implies  that  its 
sensory  fibers  are,  in  part,  direct,  and  warrants  our  belief 
that  the  great  bundles  of  centripetal  fibers  proceeding  from 
the  periphery  split,  and  whilst  the  greater  number  proceed 
to  the  direct  sensorimotor  or  representative  centers  about 
the  Rolandic  fissure,  a  limited  number  proceed  directly  to 
the  organ  of  consciousness.  Such  an  anatomic  arrange- 
ment would  explain  the  sentry-like  function.  It  would  thus 
become  clear  why  a  peripheral  stimulus,  as  a  malposition 
of  the  body,  could  arouse  the  light-sleeping  organ  of  con- 
sciousness, which,  in  turn,  could  arouse  the  representative 
or  direct  motor  Rolandic  centers.  As  will  be  noticed,  the 
dynamic  aspect  of  the  question  is  always  decisive,  since  the 
control  of  subordinate  centers  is  only  at  first  of  the  small- 
est or  most  easily  moved  muscles,  such  as  the  fingers,  a 
hand,  or  the  head  placed  in  unstable  equilibrium.  And  not 
only  this, — I  have  often  had  the  sense  of  weight  and  dis- 
comfort of  a  limb  before  I  had  succeeded  in  awakening  the 
center  that  controlled  that  limb.  The  argument  for  direct 
sensory  fibers  to  the  organ  of  consciousness  is  still  further 
strengthened  by  the  frequent  phenomenon  of  my  sleep  that 
follows :  Upon  being  aroused  by  a  very  sudden  noise  I 
have  often  clearly  recognized  the  fact  that  I  hear  the  sound 
with  my  consciousness,  if  I  may  be  pardoned  the  seeming 
absurdity,  before  I  do  with  the  auditory  center.  The  vibra- 
tory impact    arouses    consciousness   a   moment   before  it 


330  DREAMS,  SLEEP,  AND  CONSCIOUSNESS. 

arouses  audition.  The  safe-guarding  function  of  conscious- 
ness in  sleep  is  thus  again  exemplified.  In  Science, 
November  2d,  a  correspondent  describes  an  interesting  phe- 
nomenon of  his  dream  that  also  throws  light  upon  this  as- 
pect of  the  question.  The  strokes  of  a  wood-chopper  were, 
in  the  early  part  of  the  dream,  irregular  and  without  order. 
They  then  became  rhythmical  for  four  strokes,  and  then  the 
sleeper  awoke  to  find  the  clock  striking  midnight.  After 
awaking  he  counted  four  beats,  and  thus  he  knew  that  the 
clock-strokes'  brought  into  the  dream  their  rhythm  at  about 
the  fifth  stroke,  and  made  the  axe-strokes  coincide  with  the 
clock-strokes.  In  other  words,  the  sound  and  its  rhythm 
reached  consciousness  directly,  impressing  upon  it  their 
own  peculiarities,  which  persisted  for  a  time  until  the 
stronger  stimulation  of  the  auditory  center  aroused  all  the 
mind  into  "  awakedness."  *  Finally,  there  is  one  other 
curious  illustration  of  the  question  that  also  shows  the  del- 
icacy and  the  independence  or  the  action  of  the  sleeping 
consciousness.     I  allude  to  the  ability  possessed  by  some 


*  In  a  late  dream  my  fancy  took  on  a  musical  remembrance  or  coloring,  and 
the  same  may  have  been  aroused  by  the  miaulings  of  a  cat  below  the  window. 
Before  awaking,  the  music  of  the  dream  was  consonant  with  that  of  Thomas, 
and  was  exceedingly  grateful  and  musical.  When  the  caterwauling  became 
loud  enough  to  awaken  me,  the  pleasure  of  the  dream  was  suddenly  changed 
into  disgust  at  the  unmusical  noise  of  the  cat,  that  an  instant  previously  had 
been  one  of  delight.  In  this  it  is  also  possible  to  suppwse  the  stimulation 
of  consciousness  was  from  and  through  the  auditory  center,  but  that  too  faint 
or  imperfectly  worked-up  material  was  furnished.  It  seems  more  probable  that 
the  stimulation  was  directly  from  the  external  sense-organ  without  the  inter- 
mediation of  the  sound-center.  Just  as  fibers  proceed  from  the  cochlea  to  the 
cortical  auditory  center,  where  neural  vibrations  become  sound,  so  it  would 
seem  that  other  fibers  proceed  from  the  cochlea  to  the  consciousness  center 
intermediating  its  direct  stimulation.  If,  in  my  dream,  consciousness  had  been 
fed  from  the  auditory  or  musical  center,  it  could  hardly  have  mistaken  the  cat's 
misery  for  music.  The  same  may  be  said  as  regards  my  dream  of  being  in- 
tensely "  tickled  "  by  a  hand  beneath  the  chin  to  awake  with  the  thought  that 
my  neck  is  not  the  least  "  ticklish." 


DREAMS,  SLEEP,   AND  CONSCIOUSNESS.  331 

people  of,  as  it  were,  winding  up  the  alarum  of  their  men- 
tal mechanism  so  that  they  shall  awake  at  a  given  hour.  I 
have  known  people  that  sleep  soundly  and  awake  habitu- 
ally within  a  few  minutes  of  the  time  they  had,  upon  going 
to  sleep,  determined  to  awaken  themselves.  My  own  at- 
tempts to  do  this  always  result  in  lying  awake  the  most  of 
the  night.  My  alarum  goes  off  at  a  soiipgon,  entirely  too 
soon,  and  keeps  on  rattling  at  a  great  rate ! 

Hypnotism,  it  may  parenthentically  be  remarked,  would 
seem  to  be  the  reverse  of  the  dream-state.  In  the  latter 
there  is  no  centripetal  stimulus,  the  subordinate  motor 
centers  being  quiescent.  In  the  hypnotic  state  the  senses 
are  alert,  the  sensori-motor  centers  actively  functional,  but 
the  center  of  consciousness  is  resleep,  or,  what  is  the  same 
thing,  supplanted  or  enslaved.  How  this  can  be  done  is  a 
mystery.  However  well  attested,  one  is  inclined  to  think 
it  impossible,  and  that  it  does  not  happen,  except  in  the 
natural  way,  that  a  pliant,  weak  mind  finds  satisfaction  in 
acting  a  role,  called  the  hypnotic  state. 

VIII.  Insomnia. — In  passing  we  may  note  the  influ- 
ence of  the  kind  of  waking  life  upon  the  dreaming  conscious- 
ness. Work,  especially  physical  work,  but  even  normal 
mental  work,  is  usually  followed  by  refreshing  and  com- 
paratively dreamless  sleep.  Worry,  solicitude,  and  vexa- 
tion, bring  troubled  dreams  and  even  pronounced  insomnia. 
Why  is  this  ?  In  normal  exhaustion  of  the  nervous  centers 
there  is  no  conflict  or  unwonted  excitation  of  the  center 
of  consciousness.  There  is  a  low  reserve,  and  investment 
or  action  must  cease  until  interest  or  income  accrues.  In 
long-continued  anxiety,  however,  consciousness  is  stormed 
by  a  multitude  of  conflicting  and  continuous  stimuli,  lead- 
ing to  no  definite  resolve  and  action,  and  hence  ending  in 
a  surcharge  of  energies,  probably  a  real  hyperemia  and 
febrile  excitation  of  the  organ,  that  do  not  cease  at  night 


332  DREAMS,  SLEEP,  AND  CONSCIOUSNESS. 

or  with  sleep.  I  do  not  doubt  that  the  frontal  lobes  of  a 
man  dying,  finally  worn  out  with  years  of  care  and  dis- 
appointment, would,  under  the  microscope,  show  a  different 
condition  from  those  of  a  healthy  and  happy  man.  On  the 
other  hand,  if  hyperesthesia  is  pathologic,  anesthesia  is  cer- 
tainly indicative  of  a  poor  type  of  consciousness.  That  must 
be  a  vegetative  sort  of  consciousness  that  sleeps  as  soundly 
and  as  long  as  the  lower  centers.  No  nimble-witted  man 
can  fail  to  be  a  dreamer.  My  friend  must  be  a  dreamer  of 
interesting  dreams  !  One  that  does  not  dream  is  not  ex- 
ceptionally sympathetic,  responsive,  alert; — he  has  not 
highly  keen  sensibilities,  is  not  nobly  religious,  or  chari- 
table, or  aspiring. 

I  have  always  been  subject  to  insomnia  of  the  following 
kind, — I  am  likely  to  have  periods  of  paroxysmal,  emotional, 
and  imaginative  excitement :  If  I  am  pursuing  an  object  of 
study,  trying  to  solve  some  scientific  or  practical  problem, 
or  if  greatly  interested  in  some  work  of  art,  etc.,  I  habitually 
awake  in  the  night  after  a  short  sleep,  and  at  once  the 
whole  machinery  of  intellect,  imagination,  and  conscious- 
ness is  in  full  cry !  The  heart  is  aroused,  and  by  the  spur 
of  excitement  is  put  into  the  field  at  full  speed.  It  is  clear 
that  this  organ  of  consciousness  requires  the  best  of  blood, 
and  a  deal  of  it !  All  this  would  appear  to  be  the  overflow 
of  nerve-force  from  the  center  of  consciousness  along  the 
centrifugal  lines  of  its  habitual  discharge  to  the  subordinate 
centers  that  are  thus  kept  in  a  state  of  activity  though 
really  needing  rest.  All  the  devices  for  wooing  sleep  are 
but  tricks  to  prevent  the  outflow.  None  of  the  methods 
commonly  employed  help  me,  and  they  appear  to  be  based 
upon  a  false  principle.  They  generally  consist  in  a  repeti- 
tion of  the  same  discharges,  or  an  exercise  of  the  same 
subordinate  centers.  However  often  we  count  or  repeat 
the  letters  of  the  alphabet,  or  in  thought  walk  up  and 


DREAMS,  SLEEP,   AND   CONSCIOUSNESS.  333 

down  the  same  path,  the  mimic  and  weak  outflow  is  by  the 
same  commissural  fibers  to  the  same  subordinate  centers. 
If  I  am  ever  able  to  succeed  by  any  device  at  all,  it  is  by 
deflecting,  derouting,  and  subdividing  the  outflow  in  such 
a  way  that  it  does  not  flood  any  single  subordinate  center. 
No  single  train  or  repetition  of  thought  is  allowed,  the 
stream  is  divided  so  that  each  subsidiary  center  gets  such 
a  minimum  of  excitation  that  it  can  resist  it,  and  thus  all 
are  calmed.  For  example,  I  think,  for  a  passing  moment, 
of  each  part  of  my  body  in  succession,  and  of  each  function 
of  the  same,  of  each  sense,  with  the  origin,  course,  and 
result  of  each  sensation.  Thus  traversing  the  round,  I,  as 
I  believe,  drain  ofi"  and  subdivide  the  superabundance  of 
innervation  to  every  possible  outlet.  Instead  of  persistently 
doing  something,  or  constantly  exercising  motor-centers 
exclusively,  it  is  better  to  trust  to  a  mimic  sensational  ex- 
ercise. Thoughts  of  personal  motion  are  outgoing  and 
stimulating,  thoughts  of  visual  and  auditory  sensations  are 
receptive  and  calming.  Another  device  I  have  success- 
fully used  is  to  imagine  myself  in  midocean,  becalmed, 
alone,  not  frightened,  and  looking  out  over  a  monochro- 
matic ocean  to  all  points  of  the  compass  successively, 
thinking  of  all  the  strange  life  in  the  depths  below  me 
whose  bottom  leads  on  and  on  to  distant  isles, — watching 
also  the  starlit  space  above,  as  it  pales  into  magical  sun- 
rises, and  the  ever-changing  phantasmagoria  of  cloudland 
flows  ceaselessly  by. 

IX.  General  Characteristics  of  Dreams. — Most  of  my 
dreams  are  of  actions.  I  do  things,  or  try  to  do  them,  or 
am  the  object  of  the  acts  of  others.  Very  few  are  con- 
templative, intellectual,  or  purely  sensational.  This  shows 
that  the  mimic  stage  of  dreamland,  in  a  general  way,  is  the 
same  as  that  of  the  waking  life.  Consciousness  is  most 
habitually  employed  in  the  direction  of  the  activities  of  the 


334  DREAMS,  SLEEP,  AND   CONSCIOUSNESS. 

motor  centers.*  Historic  man,  even  more  than  at  present, 
has  been  an  active,  not  a  contemplative,  reflective,  or  recep- 
tive being.  The  mimic  exercise  of  motor  function  by  the 
dreaming  consciousness  produces  for  me  two  types  of 
dreams  :  First,  the  clogged,  heavy,  and  impeded,  in  which 
the  feet  are  stuck  fast  or  weigh  a  thousand  pounds,  etc.  I 
think  this  is  a  familiar  sort  of  dream,  and  finds  its  rationale 
in  the  resisted  efforts  of  the  organ  of  consciousness  to 
arouse  the  subordinate  sleeping  centers  of  motion.  In  the 
dream  we  do  not  know  why  we  cannot  lift  the  feet,  or  reach 
the  succoring  hand ;  we  are  only  intensely  conscious  that 
the  foot  or  hand  are  sluggish  and  benumbed — as  in  truth 
they  are.  Consciousness  sends  its  mandate  to  the  Rolandic 
centers,  but  there  is  no  response.  Hence  the  genesis  of 
the  so-called  "  nightmare."  Resisted  and  unresponsive 
effort  arouses  fear  and  further  effort.  Bodily  malposition 
may  also  serve  to  beget  the  endeavor  to  arouse  subordinate 
motor  centers.  A  correlated  fact  may  be  bracketed  here. 
A  familiar  dream-experience  consists  in  dropping  or  step- 
ping off  some  high  place,  or  falling  through  the  air,  and 
with  the  drop,  or  the  crash,  we  awake  in  fright.  If  our 
conception  of  cerebral  action  is  correct,  this  would  find  its 
explanation  in  the  loss  of  the  habitual  checks  and  control 
of  the  lower  sense-centers.  When  awake,  consciousness 
exercises  control  of  the  muscles  and  saves  the  body  from 
falling.  When  asleep,  the  command  is  also  given,  but  the 
lower  centers  and  their  muscles  do  not  obey — and  we  fall. 


*  A  dreaming  dog  presents  a  suggestive  picture:  The  paws  jerk,  the  lids 
quiver,  the  jaws  snap,  he  barks  little,  short,  spasmodic  barks,  or  he  growls  and 
whines.  I  picture  the  consciousness-center  intensely  active,  the  chase  in  his 
dream  is  wild.  The  subordinate  centers  are  partially  aroused  by  the  overflow 
from  the  higher  center,  hut  not  normally  functional  until  such  a  pitch  of  ex- 
citement is  reached  that,  in  the  culmination  of  the  dream,  all  and  several  are 
"  awakened." 


DREAMS,   SLEEP,   AND   CONSCIOUSNESS.  335 

Not  only  this,  but  the  danger  of  falling,  the  predicament 
we  are  in,  is  aroused  by  the  fact  that  the  inhibition  and 
checks  of  sense-control  do  not  exist  in  sleep  to  keep  us 
away  from  heights  and  dangerous  places.  Consciousness 
records  the  efforts  of  will  we  make,  as  if  they  were  registered 
in  action,  and  it  sees  no  difference  between  willed  act  and 
motor  fact. 

The  second  class  of  movement-dreams,  or  action-dreams, 
is  the  reverse  of  the  first,  and  consists  in  movements  not  only 
unencumbered,  but  of  transcendent  ease.  The  glorious 
pleasure  of  supernatural  power  and  action  is  indescribable. 
I  often  awake  quivering  with  the  intense  pleasure  of  free, 
swift,  and  confident  activity.  Sometimes  it  is  a  sort  of 
skating  or  gliding  across  countless  miles  of  country  or 
ocean ;  sometimes  it  is  a  giant-like  striding  from  mountain- 
top  to  top  ;  sometimes  the  perfect  eagle  swoop  through  the 
blue  of  space,  effortless  and  superb  !  May  this  be  thought 
of  as  either  a  normaLplay  of  the  organ  of  consciousness 
with  its  own  forces,  or  as  a  healthy  mimic  outflow  of  inner- 
vation along  the  usual  routes  to  the  subordinate  centers  of 
motion,  which,  in  comparative  exhaustion,  absorb  the  in- 
flow without  themselves  being  aroused  to  an  active  outflow 
of  innervation  ? 

It  has  been  a  source  of  wonder  that  in  the  classical 
hashish  dream  of  the  De  Quincey  type  an  eternity  of 
time  is  compressed  into  a  moment,  and  to  the  rioting  con- 
sciousness that  moment  is  indistinguishable  from  the  actual 
detailed  facts  of  a  thousand  years.  In  the  same  way,  space 
broadens,  and  the  body  itself,  or  the  room  it  dwells  in, 
becomes  wide  as  the  starlit  night.  Personality  may  even 
seem  to  double,  and  thus  again  enlarge  the  boundaries  and 
possibilities  of  experience.  Is  not  all  this  also  a  corollary 
of  the  anatomic  and  physiologic  conditions  of  the  organ 
of  consciousness  ?  We  have  memories  of  waking  life  only 
as  things  and  events  transpire  that  memory  records  :  but 


336  DREAMS,  SLEEP,   AND   CONSCIOUSNESS. 

the  evolution  of  a  tree,  or  a  world,  or  a  life,  is  a  slow  pro- 
cess. But,  to  the  mind,  in  the  condensation  of  thought,  it 
becomes  an  instantaneous  thing.  We  can  think  the  evolu- 
tion of  a  solar  system  in  the  flash  of  an  instant.  It  is  fact 
that  draws  this  out  to  ages.  In  sleep,  let  us  again  repeat, 
facts  and  all  their  qualities  are  lost  in  the  loss  of  the  lower 
centers  of  sensation  and  motion.  Hence  the  mental  review 
of  time-stretches  and  the  multitudinously-linked  chain  of 
facts  becomes  temporarily  as  much  of  a  reality  to  the 
dreaming  consciousness  as  if  the  law  of  causality  were  truly 
operative.  It  does  not  suspect  that  its  phantasmagoria  is 
not  real,  because,  so  far  as  itself  is  concerned,  it  is  real. 
We  must  remember  that  consciousness  is  never  directly 
touched  by  reality.  It  only  receives  the  echoes  and  repre- 
sentatives of  reality.  In  the  hashish-dream  it  is  not  sus- 
pected that  the  thousand  years  are  not  actually  passing. 
It  is  only  when  we  awake  and  compare  the  dream  with  the 
slow  and  droning  march  of  casually-linked  things  that  we 
recognize  that  the  thousand  years  were  condenised  by  the 
wizard  of  consciousness.  Memory  is  in  truth  only  the 
memory  of  psychic  happenings,  and  as  these,  essentially, 
are  almost,  if  not  absolutely,  timeless  and  spaceless,  it  fol- 
lows that  the  passage  of  a  cycle  of  material  events  may  be 
swept  through  the  hour-glass  constriction  of  consciousness 
in  a  brief  moment.  Or  again,  we  may  in  dreams  wish  or 
will  to  do  a  thousand  things  in  a  flooding  instant  of  bound- 
less desire,  that  a  world  and  an  eternity  could  not  realize 
under  the  conditions  of  causality.  But  it  is  apparent  that 
to  the  dreaming  consciousness  this  crowded  rush  of  desires 
and  willings  is  as  real,  apparently  as  subject  to  time  and 
its  laws,  as  if  the  lower  centers  were  not  asleep.  It  is  these 
lower  centers  that  give  to  it  the  term  of  comparison  and 
enslave  it  in  the  treadmill  of  reality.  In  sleep  the  noble 
slave  is  temporarily  set  free ;  sleep  seals  the  eye-lids  of  its 
masters,  the  spirit  rises  out  of  the  chains  that  bind  con- 


DREAMS,  SLEEP,  AND  CONSCIOUSNESS.  337 

sciousness  to  reality,  and  the  divine  slave  at  once  comes 
into  possession  of  the  universe  as  its  absolute  plaything, 
whilst  over  its  fancy  hovers  the  superb  child's  hallucination 
that  the  paltry  nothings  of  its  imagination  are  real  suns 
and  stars  and  worlds,  the  actual  march  of  cosmic  events 
and  the  pomps  of  eternal  time  !  Its  mimic  play  and  light- 
est wishes  instantaneously  become  incontrovertible  and 
unquestioned  facts.  Had  they  reasoned  of  the  world  of 
dreamland,  those  philosophers  that  resolved  the  world, 
with  its  laws  of  time  and  space  and  causality,  into  mentality, 
would  have  been  wiser  than  they  were. 

A  pronounced  characteristic  of  all  dreams  is  their  great 
lack  of  logical  correspondence  with  the  laws  of  the  real 
world.  In  dreaming  this  is  not  recognized.  The  most 
intolerable  absurdity  seems  perfectly  natural.  One  face 
or  person  fades  into  another,  we  take  hundred-mile  steps, 
we  do  things  outrageously  mal-a-propos,  without  a  sus- 
picion of  their  incongruity.  I  gather  from  this  that  the 
waking  activity  of  the  organ  of  consciousness  is  regulated 
and  governed  by  the  multiform  stimuli  of  the  subordinate 
centers.  In  a  certain  sense  and  in  the  light  of  evolution, 
the  organ  of  consciousness  is  an  outgrowth  and  product 
of  these  subordinates.  In  the  waking  life  their  messages 
must  continually  be  sent  to  the  higher  unifying  center. 
The  product  of  their  combined  influence  must  be  inhibitory 
and  regulative.  In  this  way  there  is  produced  the  sanity, 
the  correspondence  with  reality,  that  marks  the  orderly, 
mirror-like  function  of  our  waking  consciousness.  The 
essential  characteristic  of  sleep  is  the  nonactivity  of  the 
subordinates,  and  hence  the  unregulated  and  fantastic 
mimic  life  of  the  organ,  acting  without  data  or  content. 
The  restraining  checks  and  the  completing  fullness  of  the 
influences  of  the  lower  centers  are  removed,  and  hence  the 
inevitable  result  is  inconsequentiality,  illogicality.  Another 
reason  for  this  fantasticalness  lies  in  the  fact  that  even  in 
29 


338  DREAMS,  SLEEP,   AND   CONSCIOUSNESS. 

waking  the  work  of  consciousness  consists  in  no  exclusive 
occupation  with  one  set  of  stimuli.  Strictly  speaking,  there 
is  no  habit  of  consciousness.  It  must  remain  at  the  instant 
service  of  any  or  many  orders  and  kinds  of  control,  whether 
of  sensation,  memory,  or  various  motive.  When  removed 
from  the  inhibition  and  control  of  reality,  consciousness 
could  not  be  supposed  to  show  an  order  and  logicality  of 
succession  it  had  never  had  in  real  life. 

Depriving  it  also  of  content  or  material  would  all  the 
more  emphasize  its  whimsicality.  In  dreams  the  sense  of 
the  incongruous  or  the  ludicrous  is  with  me  of  the  extrem- 
est  rarity.  The  humorous  is  the  incongruous,  and  this  is 
a  failure  of  correspondence  with  the  real.  If  the  compari- 
son with  reality  be  excluded,  then,  though  every  dream  be 
incongruity  itself,  recognition  of  the  fact  by  the  dreaming 
consciousness  is  infallibly  excluded.  I  have  sometimes 
been  awakened  by  my  own  laughter  at  some  apparently 
highly  absurd  thing,  but  when  awake  I  have  been  just  as 
much  disgusted  at  myself  to  find  the  plainly-remembered 
dream  in  reality  contained  no  vestige  of  the  humorous. 

X.  Differences  Bet^vee^  the  Dreaming  and  the  \Vak- 
ing  Consciousness. — I  preserve  in  my  dreams  most  of  my 
stronger  esthetic,  deeper  moral,  and  passionate  feelings  or 
emotions,  but  with  noteworthy  differences.  These  differ- 
ences may  perhaps  be  summed  up  by  saying  that  in  dream- 
land the  factitious  elements  and  refinements  of  a  super- 
posed civilization  fall  away,  leaving  in  relief  the  nude 
realism  of  primitive  and  disingenuous  personality.  For 
example,  the  occasional  prevalence  of  generative  instincts 
might  alone  convert  one  to  the  doctrine  of  biology  covered 
by  the  adage,  omne  vivutn  ex  ovo.  Assuredly,  restraint  and 
scruples  concerning  such  matters  are  not  known  in  dream- 
land. The  chastest  do  not  blush  there.  I  rarely  have  any 
care  for  clothes  or  nudity  there,  and  the  bizarrerie  of  my 
dream-plights  in  this  respect  often  amuses  my  waking  con- 


DREAMS,  SLEEP,  AND  CONSCIOUSNESS.  339 

sciousness.  In  one  way  I  think  it  remarkably  confirmative 
of  my  general  thought  that,  as  the  savageness  of  the  brute 
and  the  selfishness  of  the  animal  come  out  in  intoxication, 
it  is  not  so  in  dreamland.  Rage,  destructiveness,  tyranny, 
delight  in  power — these  are  almost  never  present.  The 
reason  is  that  the  power-producing  or  motor-centers  are 
asleep.  Neither  is  hypocrisy  known  in  dreamland.  False- 
hood is  largely  a  product  of  civilization.  There  are  few  of 
us  that  are  not  forced  into  subterfuge,  peccadillo,  and  even 
cowardly  lies,  by  the  conventionalities  and  disguised  war- 
fare of  civilized  life.  Consciousness  is  in  truth  ethical  and 
unselfish  :  it  holds  the  balance  between  the  selfish  greeds 
of  the  lower  centers.  In  sleep  these  last  are  forced  to  stop 
their  wranglings  and  their  competition  for  place  and  recog- 
nition, and  it  therefore  never  occurs  to  dream-conscious- 
ness to  lie  or  deceive  for  selfish  reasons.  Morally,  dream- 
land is  a  brighter  country  than  our  noisier  world.  If 
dreams  tell  us  anything  about  our  essential  personality, 
they  argue  against  our  innate  depravity.  I  think  I  am 
more  kind  and  careful  of  others'  rights  in  dreamland  than 
in  awakeland.  In  the  last  country  I  have  to  endure  many 
grievous  hurtings  of  my  feelings  in  the  matter  of  cruelty 
to  animals.  In  dreamland  my  indignation  at  it  is  constantly 
aroused.  I  may  see  nothing  absurd  in  a  fireman  compel- 
ling his  beautiful  horse  to  pull  the  fire-engine  by  a  three- 
tined  fork  thrust  through  the  animal's  nose,  but  I  awake, 
boiling  with  rage  and  vowing  to  arouse  society  to  a  recog- 
nition of  the  shame  of  it  all.  Unless  feelings  of  profound 
pity,  contempt,  indignation,  etc.,  are  aroused,  I  find  that  in 
dreamland  I  am,  not  immoral,  but  unmoral.  Unless  a  lie 
hurts  somebody  in  a  way  to  arouse  fervidness  of  feeling,  I 
do  not  greatly  hate  the  lie  or  the  liar.  But  if  the  lie  pro- 
duce injustice  or  wrong,  I  hate  that,  and  the  author  of  it, 
though  not  because  of  the  falsehood. 

In  my  dreams  I  have  even  killed  others  with  utterly  no 


340  DREAMS,  SLEEP,  AND  CONSCIOUSNESS. 

compunction  or  regret,  but  with  satisfaction  that  I  had 
righted  some  wrong,  or  vindicated  somebody,  or  succored 
the  weak.  I  remark  always  the  most  unquestioned  and 
enthusiastic  acceptance  of  the  fundamental  passions  of  pity, 
love,  justice,  indignation  at  wrong,  etc.  These  great 
forces  of  mental  life  have  stamped  their  impress  so  deeply 
into  the  structure  of  the  organ  of  consciousness  that,  even 
when  the  stimulus  of  the  fact  is  absent,  when  the  subor- 
dinate centers  are  hushed  in  sleep,  and  sensation  is  non- 
existent, there  still  remains  the  play  of  nervous  activity 
along  the  old  lines,  and  with  sufficient  intensity  to  light  up 
again  the  emotions  that  once  blazed  forth  at  the  touch  of 
the  real. 

As  to  the  reasoning  power,  I  find  my  dream-conscious- 
ness wholly  devoid  of  it.  I  have  heard  of  mathematicians 
working  out  incomplete  problems  in  their  sleep,  or  the  key 
to  some  scientific  mystery  or  financial  vexation  reaching 
one  at  that  time.  To  say  the  least,  such  cases  must  be  very 
exceptional.  Judgment,  weighing  complex  probabilities, 
induction  by  close  lines  of  logic  from  manifold  details  to  a 
single  cause  or  principle, — all  this  presupposes  a  converg- 
ence of  myriad  nerve-currents  of  many  and  disassociated 
points,  the  focalization  of  many  sensations,  memories, 
past  and  present,  etc.,  etc.  To  think  is  to  ponder,  and 
weighing  is  the  essential  characteristic  of  all  judgment. 
But  the  dreaming  consciousness  is  without  judgment.  It 
is  always  the  incongruous  with  which  it  deals.  Its  work- 
shop turns  out  good  work  only  if  good  material  is  fur- 
nished it.  It  is  fancy,  imagination,  feeling,  sentiment,  but 
never  ratiocination.  The  subordinate  centers  that  furnish 
it  with  material,  that  give  it  legality,  and  hold  it  to  reality, 
are  sleeping.  The  factory  is  without  "  raw  material,"  and 
the  hands  go  holidaying. 

In  matters  esthetic  my  dreamland  is  a  revelation  to 
me,  and  in  this  respect  alone  frequently  transcends  reality. 


DREAMS,   SLEEP,   AND   CONSCIOUSNESS.  341 

I  have  never  taken  a  dose  of  cannabis  indica  or  other 
cerebral  stimulant.  I  have  no  need  of  such  things.  Re- 
leased from  the  bonds  of  the  actual,  my  imagination 
wanders  in  dreamland  among  supersensual  delights  and 
basks  in  the  light  that  never  was  on  sea  or  shore.  I  note 
this  peculiar  fact :  in  my  enjoyment  of  dreamland-beauty 
there  is  an  element  of  fervor,  an  implication  of  the  feeHngs, 
that  I  can  but  barely  remember,  not  experience,  as  I  stand 
before  the  most  beautiful  of  real  things.  May  the  reason 
of  this  be,  that  in  addition  to  the  real  being  always  far 
from  perfect,  there  is  in  no  waking  human  life  utter  ob- 
livion of  its  painful  and  tragic  elements,  past  or  present  ? 
Every  sense  has  been  outraged,  every  center  of  the  brain 
has  suffered,  and  even  whilst  these  may  send  their  most 
exultant  peans  of  major  joy  to  the  higher  center  of  con- 
sciousness, there  must  ever  intermingle  the  minor  notes 
and  discords  of  want,  insatisfaction,  and  pain,  that  keep  its 
harmony  from  being  perfect.  But  when  all  sources  of  such 
discords  are  hushed,  when  these  lower  centers  are  asleep, 
the  freed  consciousness  can  revel  in  joyousness  under  the 
fleeting  illusion  that  its  mimic  life  is  real. 

XI.  Preponderance  of  Visual  Sensations. — Motion 
and  vision  are  the  two  great  factors  of  mental  life,  and  it 
is  suggestive  to  find  that  those  animals  that  so  long  as 
possessing  motion,  keep  their  eyes  and  the  intelligence 
that  coexists  with  vision  and  motility,  when  they  attach 
themselves  permanently  to  one  spot  the  eyes  and  intelli- 
gence are  lost.  Parasites  are  usually  eyeless,  and  vege- 
table parasites  are  without  chlorophyl.  The  whole  wretched 
order  of  microbes,  molds,  and  fungi,  the  curse  of  the 
physician  and  of  the  world,  are  parasitic  and  without 
chlorophyl.  The  insane,  the  idiotic,  the  weak-minded,  the 
epileptic,  have,  relatively  speaking,  very  subnormal  vision 
and  a  defective  ocular  mechanism. 


342  DREAMS,   SLEEP,   AND  CONSCIOUSNESS. 

Above  the  motor  element,  the  predominant  characteris- 
tic of  my  dreams  is  that  they  are  made  up  of  things  seen. 
I  do  not  remember  ever  to  have  dreamed  of  an  odor, 
pleasant  or  foul,  though  often  dreaming  of  perfumed  or 
malodorous  things.  In  the  same  way,  though  I  have 
dreamed  of  eating,  I  preserved  no  remembrance  of  im- 
pressions of  taste.  The  apple  I  ate — I  cannot  now  tell  if 
it  were  sweet  or  sour.  Tactile  sensation  is  somewhat  fre- 
quently a  component  of  dream-phenomena,  but  generally 
only  in  conjunction  with  another  sensation  or  feeling  that 
smothers  it.  If  I  am  struck  by  another,  the  feeling  or 
pain,  if  existent,  is  at  once  lost  in  some  psychic  emotion, 
of  anger  or  fear,  etc.  Pain  cannot  enter  dreamland,  be- 
cause the  centers  that  feel  pain  are  asleep.  I  never  re- 
member to  have  remarked  in  dreams  that  a  thing  was  ex- 
ceptionally and  peculiarly  smooth,  or  hard,  or  sticky,  etc. 
I  shrink  less  from  touching  a  foul  thing  in  dreams  than  in 
real  life.  I  cannot  remember  ever  to  have  been  cold  or 
oppressively  warm  in  dreamland.  If  I  shiver  from  cold  or 
am  too  near  a  fire  I  note  especially  the  motion,  or  sight, 
or  perhaps  the  feeling  of  the  shivering  instead  of  the  cold, 
and  I  remember  the  danger,  or  the  vision  of  the  fire,  not 
the  pain.  All  of  this  is  consonant  with  the  rerepresenta- 
tive  function  of  consciousness.  The  senses  are  represented 
in  it  only  when  awake.  As  to  hearing,  few  or  none  of  my 
dreams  contain  any  distinct  records  of  sounds.  I  can 
express  it  no  better  than  to  say  that  the  results  of  hearing 
are  manifest,  but  not  the  sounds  themselves.  I  speak  and 
am  spoken  to,  and  act  accordingly,  but  I  am  never  able  to 
recall  any  timbre  of  voice,  any  inflection,  emphasis,  or 
pitch  that  causes  the  voice  to  be,  at  the  time,  thought  of  as 
remarkable,  or  that  gave  its  noteworthiness,  if  it  had  any, 
enough  vividness  to  project  it  across  the  bridge  of  awaking 
into  a  work-day  memory.     When  awake,  nothing  so  fires 


DREAMS,   SLEEP,   AND   CONSCIOUSNESS.  343 

me  with  uncontrollable  emotion  as  the  music  of  Beethoven, 
Wagner,  or  Franz.  I  cannot  remember  ever  to  have  heard 
music  in  dreamland. 

But  how  different  it  is  with  the  sense  of  vision  !  Every- 
thing not  motion — and  that  is  largely  so — is  a  thing  seen. 
How  empty  and  destitute  must  be  the  dreamland  of  the 
congenitally-blind!  To  me  vision  gives  dreamland  all  its 
beauty  and  most  of  its  interest.  It  could  hardly  be  other- 
wise, since  the  same  is  true  of  the  waking  consciousness. 
Intellect,  indeed,  is  almost  entirely  formed  of  visual  factors  ; 
every  component  of  what  we  call  psychic  life  and  civiliza- 
tion is  largely  the  product  of  vision.  Language  and  the 
letters  of  the  alphabet  themselves  are  the  records  of  things 
seen.  Vision  is  at  once  the  most  metaphysical  of  real, 
and  the  most  real  of  metaphysical  things.  Astride  a  ray 
of  light  Puck  passes  in  a  flash  from  matter  to  mind.  The 
library  of  the  soul,  memory,  is  a  picture-gallery.  An 
absolute  monochromatic  world  would  force  the  spirit  to 
suicide.  Had  all  eyes  been  absolutely  color-blind  Psyche 
would  not  have  been  born.  It  is  the  associate  fibers  from 
and  to  the  visual  center  that  bind  together  the  world  of 
mind  and  the  world  of  matter,  and  that  loans  life  its  value, 
and  crowns  it  with  -its  one  unalloyed  delight.  We  sleep  at 
night  when  the  eyes,  the  great  awakeners,  ministers  and 
producers  of  intellect  and  life,  are  least  utilizable.  Few 
people,  and  only  those  of  stolid  and  blunted  sensibilities, 
can  sleep  in  the  light,  even  with  what  darkness  closed  lids 
give.  It  is  interesting  to  see  how  all  living  forms,  both 
animal  and  vegetable,  dwindle  to  wretched  caricatures  of 
life,  when,  eyeless  and  colorless,  they  keep  up  existence  in 
caves  and  in  the  sea-depths.* 

XII.    Character,  the  Soul,  and  Consciousness. — In 


*  See  Packard,  "  On  Certain  Factors  of  Evolution,"  the  American  Natur- 
alist,  September,  i888. 


344  DREAMS,  SLEEP,   AND   CONSCIOUSNESS. 

a  superb  story  of  Gautier,  a  lover,  by  his  power  of  magic, 
is  able  to  lull  into  a  death-like  trance  the  being  of  his 
successful  rival.  This  lover  then  steals  the  body  of  the 
young  hu-sband,  his  rival,  and,  leaving  his  own  soul  in  the 
entranced  body  to  care  for  it,  the  passionate  lover  plans 
to  trick  the  faithful  wife.  The  conception  is  a  proof  of 
genius  !  Think  of  it !  The  lover  stole  a  body  that  thereby 
he  might  steal  a  love,  that,  in  the  absence  of  his  own  body, 
was  of  course  not  carnal.  On  the  part  of  the  husband 
one  meets  a  multitude  of  questions,  principal  of  which 
would  perhaps  be.  How  far  would  he  have  been  cheated 
had  the  thief  been  successful  ?  On  the  part  of  the  lady 
strange  trials  and  mystic  queries  also  arise.  Remember 
that  if  only  her  husband's  soul  were  absent,  there  were 
present  every  trick  of  motion,  play  of  expression,  timbre 
of  voice,  nay,  every  habit  of  mind  and  body,  that  is  in  any 
way  controlled  by  the  laws  of  corporeal  and  nervous 
organization  or  by  heredity.  What  tvojild  be  different  ? 
Both  lovers  would  be  equally  kind,  lovable,  and  loving. 
Both  would  express  their  inner  feeling  by  the  same  acts 
and  by  the  same  mechanism.  Some  one  said  that  the 
Yankee  worked  badly  where  soul  and  body  touched. 
Would  you  suppose  the  thieving  lover's  soul  could  not 
avoid  an  awkwardness  in  handling  the  mental  centers  and, 
through  them,  the  body  he  had  stolen  ?  I  bring  the  idea 
forward  here  to  illustrate,  firstly,  how  far  "  character  "  is  a 
matter  of  flesh  and  nervous  organization  ;  and,  secondly, 
how  little  there  is  in  the  so-called  "  soul  "  but  an  imper- 
sonal force.  If  two  of  your  best  friends  could  change 
"  souls,"  would  you  ever  find  it  out?  I  confess  that  after 
a  rigid  exclusion  of  the  elements  of  character  that  neces- 
sarily inhere  in  the  action  of  the  body  and  of  all  subor- 
dinate motor  and  sensory  centers,  I  find,  if  anything  be 
left,  it  is  a  very  impalpable  and  impersonal  somewhat.  Now 
this  is  precisely  what  sleep  does.     If,  therefore,  the  dream- 


DREAMS,  SLEEP,   AND   CONSCIOUSNESS.  345 

ing  consciousness  could  have  its  photograph  taken,  it 
would  have  no  recognizable  or  distinguishing  trait  of  ex- 
pression. We  should  never  know  our  disembodied  friends. 
Dream-personality  has  no  individuality.  And  thus,  through 
physiologic  psychology,  we  catch  a  glimpse  of  the  pro- 
found truth  that,  at  heart,  we  are  all  the  same.  One  com- 
mon unity  lives  in  us  all,  and  our  jealousies,  bickerings, 
differences,  and  hates  are  but  the  expression  of  the  acci- 
dents of  body ;  our  love  and  kindness,  the  expression  of 
the  one  life  that  feeds  all  our  lives.  Dream-philosophy 
teaches  religion  and  sympathy.  There  is  nothing  more 
noble  or  more  philosophically  demanded  of  us  all  than,  to 
one  another,  simple  kindness.  It  is  at  once  the  most 
human  and  the  most  divine  thing  in  this  sorry  world. 

It  is  evident  that  a  cluster  of  nerve-cells  in  the  cortex  of 
the  brain  whose  function  it  is  to  receive  stimuli  and  answer 
the  same  with  messages,  e.  g.,  to  a  muscle  to  contract, — it 
is  clear,  that  such  a  mechanically  acting  center  is  not  the 
"soul,"  or  even  a  part  of  it.  A  paralyzed  man  is  just  so 
much  a  man  spiritually  and  mentally  as  before  the  ather- 
omatous blood-vessel  drowned  the  Rolandic  convolution. 
Paralyze  every  bodily  muscle,  and  the  fact  remains  essen- 
tially the  same.  But  it  is  not  so  with  the  frontal  lobes  of 
the  brain.  Render  them  functionless  by  trauma,  disease, 
or  the  hypnotic  enslaver, — and  consciousness,  mind,  soul, 
give  no  evidences  of  existence.  Slice  off  the  frontal  por- 
tions of  the  brain  of  the  poor  pigeon,  and  life,  power,  habit 
continue,  but  not  what  it  had  of  mind.  We  may  be  thank- 
ful that  it  is  impossible  and  useless  to  slice  from  behind 
forward  and  leave  only  the  living  organ  of  consciousness. 
But  this  is  almost  exactly  what  sleep  does, — harm- 
lessly and  lovingly,  however,  and  it  is  of  the  greatest 
interest  to  see  what  a  world  is  left  after  all  peripheral  stimu- 
lation and  subordinate  centers  are  stilled  into  temporary- 
death  by  its  kind  hand.  Dreams  show  us  how  great  is  the 
30 


346  DREAMS,  SLEEP,  AND  CONSCIOUSNESS. 

world,  how  shadowy  a  thing  is  the  essential  ego.  The 
soul,  deprived  of  the  body,  seems  quite  as  unreal  and 
phantom-like  as  any  of  Charon's  passengers.  It  is  so  pro- 
foundly dependent  upon  the  crude  senses  and  experience, 
upon  memory  and  motion  to  give  it  regulation,  order,  and 
reality.  As,  one  after  another,  sleep  strips  us  of  these 
things,  that  at  best  are  but  supplies  of  soul — so  paler  and 
ever  thinner,  ever  less  individual,  grows  the  ego.  Picture- 
making  in  its  last  analysis  is  not  strictly  psychic,  and  yet 
a  visionless  world  would  be  absolutely  a  soulless  world. 
Dream-consciousness  is  consciousness  without  adventitious 
aids,  physical  props,  content,  and  checks, — it  is  conscious- 
ness, per  se  ;  it  is,  in  truth,  a  fluttering  memory  of  a  memory 
of  past  experiences;  its  life  a  mimic  play ;  its  phantasmal 
existence  is  upborne  upon  the  ghostly  wings  of  past  sorrows 
and  joys,  and  tied  to  reality  by  the  tenuous  thread  of  a 
momentarily  interrupted  sensation.  Its  master,  the  body, 
suddenly  tugs  at  the  silken  cord,  and  from  freedom  it  swiftly 
descends  and  slips  into  the  yoke  of  reality,  attentive  to  the 
thousand  demands  of  its  imperious  and  all-precious 
sovereign ! 

Postscript. 
To  the  Editor  of  The  Open  Court : — 

Among  many  interesting  communications  to  me  regard- 
ing my  paper  in  a  late  number  of  your  journal  there  is  one 
of  peculiar  interest  from  one  of  your  subscribers  in  Eng- 
land. He  states  that  he  has  been  able  to  conquer  an  in- 
somnia of  long  standing  by  the  device  of  looking  down- 
ward when  trying  to  go  to  sleep.  He  was  prevailed  upon 
to  try  the  device  of,  in  fancy,  watching  the  breath  escape 
from  his  own  nostrils.  He  found  this  successful,  but  con- 
cluded that  the  rotation  of  the  eye  downward  was  the 
essential  factor.  Thinking  of  this,  I  have  wondered  if  this 
were  not  something  more  than  an  individual  idiosyncracy. 


DREAMS,   SLEEP,  AND   CONSCIOUSNESS.  34/ 

if,  indeed,  it  were  not  founded  upon  a  true  basis  of  cerebral 
habit  and  necessity.  That  the  eye  is  the  most  easily  react- 
ing of  all  sense-mechanisms  is  a  truism,  and  that  of  all  it  is 
the  most  intimately  connected  with  all  cerebral  and  psy- 
chologic processes.  Not  only  this,  but  the  facts  of  func- 
tional amblyopia  from  prolonged  exposure  to  light,  such 
as  moon-blindness,  snow-blindness,  etc.,  show  how  injuries 
to  the  eye  is  such  continuous  stimulus.  Neither  for  the 
objects  of  shutting  out  the  external  world  of  light  nor  for 
protection  to  the  eyes  is  the  darkening  of  the  lids  sufficient, 
Sound  sleep  and  retinal  safety  demand  either  a  complete 
external  darkness,  or  a  rotation  during  sleep,  as  my  corres- 
pondent says  he  has  found  in  his  own  case,  of  the  eye-ball 
upward  beneath  the  arch  of  the  eye-brow.  I  believe  it  has 
been  experimentally  found  that  in  sleep  the  globes  do 
rotate  upward.  It  may,  however,  be  true  that  the  necessity 
was  greater  and  the  fact  more  constant  in  primitive  or 
savage  man  than  in  the  civilized  man  of  to-day.  The 
savage  slept  more  frequently  in  the  open  air.  But  if  true 
in  either  case,  the  mechanism  whereby  this  act  was  done 
required  a  constant  expenditure  of  force  to  effect  it,  and 
therefore  a  watchfulness,  an  activity  of  nerve  centers  some- 
where, that  rendered  the  whole  cerebral  machinery  less 
passive  than  if  it  were  not  compelled  to  keep  up  such  con- 
tinuous functional  output.  Somnolence  was  therefore  less 
complete,  the  restorage  function  more  drawn  upon,  the 
"  sentinel  "  was  more  alert.  If,  therefore,  such  continuous 
innervation  of  the  superior  recti  serve  to  keep  the  cerebral 
organism  from  sinking  so  speedily  or  completely  into 
slumber,  then  relieving  it  from  such  duty  of  out-going 
stimulation  would  thus  serve  to  becalm  and  quiet  it.  Re- 
versal of  the  habitual  bulbar  rotation  would  thus  serve  to 
relieve  the  centers  of  the  superior  recti  and  divide  the 
stimulus  to  the  inferior,  thus  setting  up  a  sort  of  relief  and 
rest  for  the  too  continuously  acting  center.     It  is  true  that 


348  DREAMS,  SLEEP,  AND  CONSCIOUSNESS. 

during  waking  the  superior  rectus  has  the  least  work  of  all 
the  muscles,  and  therefore  is  better  able  to  take  up  the 
continuous  work  of  the  night;  it  is  also  true  that  excessive 
innervation  of  the  inferior  rectus  would  be  as  arousing  as 
that  of  the  superior,  and,  finally,  it  may  be  said  that  the 
habit  in  the  civilized  man,  sleeping  as  he  does  in  closed 
rooms,  might  be  dropped  ;  but  there  remains  as  answer 
that  continuous  contraction  of  a  muscle  means  waking 
activity  of  the  center  and  its  correlates  ;  that  the  lower 
rectus  will  only  be  kept  functional  while  the  would-be 
sleeper  is  consciously  making  the  effort ;  and  lastly,  that 
old  habits  of  nature  or  man  are  not  soon  stopped.  Would 
not  a  better  plan  than  that  of  my  correspondent  be  that  of 
slowly  and  rhythmically  putting  rt'// the  muscles  of  the  eyes 
into  alternate  function,  each  for  a  few  minutes  at  a  time  ? 

To  the  Editor  of  The  Open  Court : — 

The  scholarly  article  entitled  "  Dreams,  Sleep,  and  Con- 
sciousness," which  appeared  in  a  late  number  of  your 
paper,  recalls  a  reminiscence  of  my  own  which  seems  to 
confirm  Dr.  Gould's  opinion,  that  sensory  communication 
may  be  had  directly  with  (the  organ  of?)  consciousness 
without  connection  or  communication  by  means  of  the 
ordinary  senses  of  perception.  Perhaps  Dr.  Gould's  theory, 
of  the  manner  in  which  this  takes  place  may  be  modified 
by  subsequent  research,  but  the  fact  itself  can  scarcely  be 
questioned. 

Some  years  ago  I  was  living  in  a  California  mining-town 
of  several  thousand  inhabitants.  The  greater  part  of  the 
town  consisted  of  frame  buildings  packed  closely  together, 
offering  the  most  favorable  conditions  for  the  rapid  spread 
of  fire,  and  the  total  destruction  of  the  town  should  fire 
once  gain  a  headway.  This  fact  was  fully  appreciated  and 
several  volunteer  fire-companies  were  equipped  by  the 
citizens.     It  is  hardly  necessary  to  say  that  every  ear  was 


DREAMS,  SLEEP,  AND  CONSCIOUSNESS.  349 

alert  for  the  clang  of  the  fire-bell,  and  at  its  first  sound 
there  was  an  instant  gathering  of  volunteers. 

One  night  in  midsummer,  after  I  had  been  several  hours 
in  bed,  my  usually  dreamless  sleep  was  suddenly  disturbed 
by  a  vivid  dream  of  fire.  I  saw  the  flames  break  out  from 
the  roof  of  the  building,  and,  in  my  dream,  ran  to  the 
engine-house  and  pulled  vigorously  at  the  ropes  that 
sounded  the  alarm-bell.  The  resulting  clangor  was  so 
loud  that  it  awakened  me,  but  the  sound  which  I  heard  in 
my  dreams  was  not  a  dream-fancy, — it  was  the  actual  ring- 
ing of  the  bell,  and  my  first  act  of  consciousness  was  the 
perception  of  this  fact. 

Now,  it  is  incredible  that  a  chance  dream  of  fire  could 
have  occurred  at  such  an  opportune  moment.  Such  a 
coincidence  is,  of  course,  possible,  but  as  improbable  as  the 
chance  coincidence  of  certain  Fraunhofer  lines  with  the 
spectrum  of  iron.  It  is  far  more  reasonable  to  suppose 
that  the  strokes  of  the  bell  reached  my  consciousness  first 
by  some  other  channel  than  the  auditory  nerves.  The 
vibratory  impact  aroused  consciousness, — perhaps  imper- 
fectly, but  still  more  faithfully  than  in  the  case  of  Dr. 
Gould  and  his  Thomas  cat.  In  the  latter  case  conscious- 
ness was  lured  into  the  belief  that  the  discordant  cater- 
wauling was  the  sweetest  of  music;  in  the  former  there 
was  no  deception.  The  first  alarm  struck  upon  my  con- 
sciousness was  the  alarm  of  Fire !  In  this  instance 
consciousness  was  in  the  wrong  as  to  locality  and  sur- 
roundings,— for  while  the  dream-fire  was  consuming  the 
school-house  on  the  hill,  the  real  fire  was  in  an  unoccupied 
building  some  distance  away, — but  it  was  not  deceived  as 
to  the  fact. 

Dr.  Gould  mentions  also  another  peculiar  feature  which 
perhaps  may  be  reckoned  among  dream-phenomena — 
namely,  the  dream  of  impending  danger  which  leads  to  the 
conscious  necessity  of  awakening.      This  condition,  which 


350  DREAMS,  SLEEP,  AND  CONSCIOUSNESS. 

is  usually  brought  about  by  an  interruption  of  the  function 
of  some  nerve-trunk,  is  one  of  which  most  people  have  an 
experience  at  some  time  or  other  in  life,  and  all  who  have 
passed  through  it  can  bear  testimony  to  the  energy  spent 
in  rousing  the  body  into  action.  Dr.  Gould  premises  his 
description  of  this  phenomena  with  the  statement  that  he 
lies  prone  upon  his  back,  and  then  says  he  can  at  first  move 
only  one  or  two  fingers,  or  perhaps  sway  his  head.  In  my 
own  experience,  while  the  general  conditions  are  the  same, 
the  manifestations  are  different.  I  invariably  sleep  on  my 
side,  and  in  the  process  of  awakening,  begin  by  moving 
the  foot  of  the  upper  limb.  I  am  not  ab'le  to  move  head 
or  hands  in  the  least,  and  the  reason  is  the  same  as  in  Dr. 
Gould's  case.  The  stimulation  of  the  motor  nerve-centers, 
although  to  consciousness  the  result  of  a  tremendous  ex- 
penditure of  energy,  is  but  a  slight  one — hardly  more  than 
sufficient,  in  fact,  to  perform  its  work.  Directed  by  con- 
sciousness, it  must  therefore  exert  its  effort  in  that  part  of 
the  body  which,  because  of  its  position,  is  most  easily 
moved,  or  in  the  least  constrainment  of  position. 

In  both  of  the  instances  noted,  the  facts  show  that  con- 
sciousness may  act  and  react  without  the  intermediation  of 
the  lower  centers.  In  the  case  of  the  fire-alarm,  conscious- 
ness was  aroused  and  received  a  message  through  the 
sensory  fibers ;  in  the  nightmare,  it  was  on  the  qui  vive, 
putting  forth  almost  superhuman  efforts  to  stimulate  the 
inert  and  irresponsive  motor-centers  into  action, 

J.  W.  Redway. 


HUMAN  LIFE  UNDER  DENIED  SENSATION.* 

The  writer  once  experienced  an  odd  series  of  feelings 
that  brought  vividly  to  mind  the  fact  that  life  and  emotion 
and  happiness  are  compatible  with  great  differences  in  and 
deprivations  of  ordinary  mental  stimuli.  A  social  gather- 
ing was  going  on  in  a  large  hall,  and  the  sounds  of  excel- 
lent music,  dancing,  laughter,  and  gayety  came  from  this 
room  where  a  hundred  or  more  happy  folk  were  passing 
happy  hours.  Upon  opening  the  door  and  being  ushered 
into  the  hall  the  room  was  found  to  be  as  dark  as  midnight. 
Not  a  thing  could  be  seen.  It  was  the  social  hour  of  the 
inmates  of  an  institution  for  the  blind  !  The  first  uncanny, 
creepy  feeling  was  soon  dissipated  by  the  thought  of  con- 
gratulation that  indomitable  mind  and  spontaneous  emo- 
tion, though  deprived  of  light  and  vision,  could  still  find 
satisfaction  and  play  through  the  medium  of  indirect 
sensation.     Soul  still  conquered  sense  ! 

The  same  thought  is  exemplified  and  emphasized  by  a 
consideration  of  the  report  of  the  Convention  of  Deaf- 
Mutes,  lately  held  in  Allentown,  Pa.  One  is  apt  thought- 
lessly to  pass  over  the  beginning  of  the  report,  that  says, 
"  The  meeting  was  called  to  order  by  the  president,  who 
rapped  vigorously  on  the  desk  to  attract  the  attention  of 
his  audience."  An  audience  of  deaf-mutes  called  to  order 
by  a  noise  !  Those  who  see  a  blind  man  tapping  the  street 
in  front  of  him  as  he  walks  are  likely  to  think  that  this  is 
solely  to  avoid  objects  that  the  cane  may  strike.  It  is  also 
to  avoid  objects  that  the  cane  does  not  strike — because  to 

*  From  the  Medical  News,  October  24,  189 1. 
351 


3Sa  HUMAN   LIFE   UNDER   DENIED  SENSATION. 

the  blind  man's  ears  and  hand  there  is  a  timbre  from  blows 
upon  the  pavement  near  its  edge,  near  posts  or  steps,  that 
is  very  different  from  the  resonance  when  the  blow  is  not 
near  such  objects.  It  is  said  that  blinded  bats  are  able  to 
fly  unharmed,  avoiding  objects  in  their  flight  by  means  of 
the  perception  of  an  increase  of  barometric  pressure  of  the 
air  close  to  those  objects — so  sensitive  to  variations  of 
pressure  is  the  expanded  interdigital  membrane.  (The 
experimental  blinding  of  the  bat,  however,  was  not  neces- 
sary, because  millions  of  bats  winter  in  Mammoth  Cave, 
miles  from  the  faintest  ray  of  light.) 

A  suggestion  is  indirectly  aroused  by  this  fact  as  to  the 
"  relaying,"  if  one  may  so  speak,  of  crude  and  faint  stimu- 
lation by  the  mechanism  of  the  nerve-ganglia  and  centers. 
There  is  a  nervous  device  that  reinforces  and  transforms 
whilst  also  repeating  the  subtle,  weak,  and  in  themselves 
meaningless,  hints  of  the  external  world  that  we  call 
sense-impression.  It  is  the  living  prototype  of  the  electri- 
cian's "  relay  "  and  microphone  combined.  Thus  all  man's 
mechanic  devices  are  but  poor  imitations  and  repetitions 
of  what  Life's  vital  forces  have  long  ago  brought  to  won- 
drous perfection. 

In  the  Deaf-Mutes'  Convention  prayer  was  said,  the  roll 
called,  addresses  made,  business  conducted,  and  long 
sessions  held — all  in  the  sign  language — all  in  silence ! 
"  The  amended  constitution  and  by-laws  were  adopted 
after  a  lively  debate."  If  present,  our  blind  friends  would 
certainly  have  thought  the  meeting  very  strange  and 
stupid.  But  the  success  in  raising  funds  for  a  proposed 
home  for  aged  and  infirm  mutes,  and  the  discussion  of 
other  worthy  objects,  made  the  gathering  a  very  interesting 
one  for  the  attending  delegates. 

According  to  the  Paris  correspondent  of  the  London  Times 
the  method  of  analyzing  motion  by  the  chronophotograph, 
which   has  been  so  happily  applied  by  M.  Marey  in  the 


HUMAN   LIFE   UNDER   DENIED   SENSATION.  353 

case  of  moving  animals,  such  as  horses  running  or  birds 
and  insects  in  flight,  has  recently  been  employed  by  M.  G. 
Demeny,  a  preparator  at  the  physiologic  station  of  M. 
Marey,  to  examine  the  movements  of  the  lips  in  speaking. 
He  has  obtained  results  which  show  that  the  form  of  the 
mouth  is  quite  different  for  the  different  articulate  sounds. 
With  these  photographs  combined  in  a  zoetrope  he  has  re- 
produced the  movements  of  the  lips  by  synthesis.  An 
ordinary  person  finds  it  difficult  to  read  the  words  by  the 
animated  pictures ;  but  a  deaf-mute  who  has  been  accus- 
tomed to  read  from  the  lips  of  a  speaker  found  it  easy  to 
do  so  from  the  photographs.  A  young  pupil  of  the 
National  Institute  of  Deaf-Mutes  in  France  could  read  the 
vowels  and  diphthongs  as  well  as  the  labials.  The  first 
experiments  were,  of  course,  not  all  that  could  be  desired ; 
but,  in  bringing  the  matter  before  the  French  Academy 
of  Sciences,  M.  Demeny  expressed  the  hope  that  in  con- 
tinuing his  researches  he  would  be  able  to  develop  a  new 
method  of  educating  deaf-mutes  by  sight  from  more  per- 
fect photographic  images.  Obviously  a  magic-lantern 
lecture  might  be  delivered  to  an  audience  of  deaf-mutes  in 
this  way. 

The  encouraging  and  deeply  suggestive  fact  of  rescuing 
the  faculty  and  power  of  speech  in  these  deaf  mutes  is  one 
that  must  command  the  sympathy  of  all.  There  is  no 
limit  to  the  ingenuity  of  Life  and  to  her  triumphs  over 
adverse  circumstances  and  deprived  stimuli.  We  have  all 
read  of  another  striking  example — very  different  in  kind, 
of  course,  but  illustrating  the  same  great  truth.  One  of 
England's  greatest  statesmen  was  blind  ;  so  was  a  great 
numismatologist ;  and  another  of  her  great  men,  a  hunter 
and  rider  of  unexampled  daring,  a  peerless  sportsman,  an 
excellent  business  man  and  active  administrator,  had 
neither  arms,  hands,  legs,  nor  feet.  One  is  reminded  of 
Emerson's  cool  answer  to  the  Millerite  who  excitedly  told 


354  HUMAN  LIFE  UNDER  DENIED  SENSATION. 

him  that  the  world  was  to  come  to  an  end  that  day:  "  Oh  ! 
well,"  said  the  philosopher,  "  we  can  get  on  very  well 
without  it." 

It  would  seem  that  if  loss  of  sight  were  added  to  loss 
of  hearing  and  speech,  naught  but  tragedy  and  melancholy 
could  be  left,  or  that  the  routine  life  of  the  lowest  func- 
tions of  nutrition,  etc.,  would  persist.  But  there  are  few 
happier  and  brighter-minded  people  than  Laura  Bridgman 
was  and  Helen  Keller  is.  Another,  a  man  likewise  de- 
prived of  these  great  avenues  of  influence  from  and 
communication  with  the  external  world,  without  which 
life  to  us  would  seen  so  barren,  traveled  all  over  the  United 
States  alone,  raised  a  family,  and  lived  out  his  period  of 
brave  and  satisfied  life.  He  could  talk  to  anybody  by 
means  of  the  ingenious  device  of  tattooing  the  English 
alphabet  upon  different  parts  of  his  hand.  Words  and 
sentences  were  spelled  out  and  recognized  by  the  positions 
of  the  letters  touched. 

The  emotional  life  of  these  imprisoned  souls,  cut  off 
from  so  many  relations  and  avenues  of  interchange 
with  the  external  world,  must  be  all  the  more  vivid 
and  hypersensitive.  A  coarse  jar  of  the  hyperesthetic 
receiving  end-organ  of  sense  is  transformed  into  a 
rude  thunder  by  the  highly  attuned  and  delicately  re- 
sponsive microphone  of  the  inner  sensation-making 
mechanism.  Thus  the  possibility  of  causing  sharp  sorrow 
is  a  necessary  concomitant  of  the  ease  of  eliciting  joy.  It 
is  the  glory  of  civilization  to  care  for  such  and  shield  them 
from  pain,  and  it  is  the  delight  of  medicine  to  minister  to 
them  its  healing.  It  is  hard  to  sympathetically  understand 
and  realize  the  inner  life  of  these  almost  windowless  minds. 
How  strange  must  seem  to  them  the  dreams  and  somnam- 
bulisms of  never-to-be-awakened  emotions,  the  dumb 
reaching  out  toward  reality  of  denied  possibilities,  the 
unsatisfied  hungerings  of  imprisoned  sensibilities.     Their 


HUMAN   LIFE   UNDER   DENIED   SENSATION.  355 

minds  must  be  thrilled  by  dim  hereditary  echoes  and  the 
far-away  caresses  of  ghostly  ancestral  hands.  With  what 
pathetic  half-responsiveness  do  these  shut-in  souls  catch 
the  shimmer  of  long-departed  life,  that  comes  to  them  like 
the  last  faint  evening  flushings  reflected  from  distant  moun- 
tain-tops to  valley-dwellers  that  are  in  the  night. 


IMMORTALITY.* 

If  you  sit  down  in  the  quiet  of  your  own  room  and 
calmly  ask  yourself  what  it  is  in  reference  to  a  life  after 
death  that  you  really  desire  and  what  you  may  reasonably 
expect,  you  will  probably  be  surprised  to  find  what  a  blank 
your  mind  is  upon  the  subject.  I  doubt  if  you  will  find 
that  you  inwardly  desire  it,  in  the  same  manner,  for  exam- 
ple, that  you  desire  wealth,  or  fame,  or  beauty.  You  have 
grown  up  in  the  belief  that  it  is  right  to  desire  and  believe, 
but  that,  you  know,  is  quite  a  different  affair  from  actual 
yearning. 

Nearly  every  one  puts  the  thought  aside  as  beyond  solu- 
tion. One  says,  "  My  thinking  will  not  change  the  fact, 
nor  my  longing  bring  it  about.  The  duty  of  the  passing 
day  is  all  I  can  fulfil."  Under  this  cover  of  postponed 
examination  the  world  has  grown  as  indifferent  to  the 
question  as  it  was  formerly  engrossed  by  it.  Fear  of 
offending  delicate  sensibilities  and  established  beliefs  keeps 
the  doubter  and  modifier  silent ;  whilst  the  extreme  of  the 
omnivorous  believer  is  set  over  against  the  out-and-out 
denier.  But  the  great  majority  of  people  are  neither 
believers  nor  disbelievers,  but  indifferentists — slowly  set- 
tling toward  an  agnostic  noncommittalism  that  is  destructive 
of  all  intellectual  and  moral  earnestness. 

It  is  my  conviction  that  this  abrogation  of  curiosity  and 
examination  is  a  most  culpable  and  dangerous  fact.  If  we 
live  after  death  it  is  of  tremendous  importance ;  if  we  do 
not,  it  is  of  no  less  vital  import,  and  the  belief,  the  disbelief, 

*  From  The  Monist,  April,  1 891. 
356 


IMMORTALITY.  357 

or  the  evasion  is  of  the  most  constant  influence,  uncon- 
sciously, subtly,  upon  every  thought  and  act  of  every  day's 
living. 

Suppose  now  we  divest  ourselves  of  the  creeps  and 
shudders  usually  accompanying  a  discussion  of  death  and 
immortality,  and  fearlessly  test  the  common  dogma  with  a 
little  analysis  in  the  light  of  scientific  research  and  reason. 
Let  us  suppose  you  are  a  believer :  what  is  it  you  believe  ? 
You  desire :  what  is  it  you  desire,  and  how  far  is  your 
desire  feasible  ?  You  are  convinced :  but  what  is  the 
truth  ?  If  possible,  in  what  way  and  to  what  extent  is  a 
future  life  possible?  If  attainable,  by  whom  and  by  what 
means  ?  Moreover,  the  kind  of  belief  makes  all  the  differ- 
ence in  the  world.  I  have  read  somewhere  about  an  African 
chief  who  killed  his  wife's  lover,  and  was  defeated  at  last 
by  his  wife's  unswerving  belief  in  immortality — she  com- 
mitting suicide  in  order  to  join  her  lover.  But  the  chief 
was  equal  to  the  emergency,  and  he  in  turn  killed  himself 
in  order  to  follow  the  pair  and  break  up  their  tete-a-tetes  in 
the  other  world !  It  all  depends  upon  what  you  propose 
doing  with  the  future  life  after  you  get  it.  You  might 
just  as  well  be  digging  clams  on  this  earth  as  "  singing 
Hosannas  around  the  throne  "  in  heaven. 

Do  you  believe  in  or  fervently  desire  what,  with  splendid 
bravery  and  abandon,  the  old  creed  called  "  the  resurrection 
of  the  body  "  ?  Terrible  counter-queries  arise  :  At  what 
age  in  your  life  would  you  choose  as  best  representing  the 
ideal  body  for  your  resurrection  ?  Would  you  prefer 
your  body  as  it  was  when  you  were  a  child,  when  youthful, 
when  mature,  or  when  old  ?  Moreover,  it  is  changing 
every  minute,  this  body.  It  is  estimated  that  something 
like  five  million  blood-corpuscles  die  every  second  of  your 
life.  Even  the  two  or  three  pounds  of  minerals  in  one's 
bones  are  only  a  little  more  permanently  fixed.  All  com- 
ponent parts  are  undergoing  change  every  instant :  they 


358  IMMORTALITY. 

soon  become  grass,  grain,  or  tree,  passing  again  into  others' 
bodies,  and  so  on  forever.  Is  it  the  form  and  feature  you 
desire  to  preserve  and  not  the  constituent  particles  ?  But 
form  and  feature  change  every  day  or  year,  and  are  as  im- 
possible to  fix  as  the  atoms  themselves.  Indeed,  is  not  the 
whole  matter  put  beyond  choice  by  the  evident  fact  that  un- 
less by  the  fiat  of  an  extramundane  deity  the  only  moment 
possible  to  fix  the  bodily  form  in  the  mold  of  eternity 
would  be  the  death-moment?  And  yet  this  were  the  most 
undesirable  of  all  seasons,  since  at  that  hour  the  body  is  in 
the  weakest,  most  useless,  and  most  wretched  condition  of 
all  the  hours  it  has  served  us.  Supposing,  therefore,  that 
you  are  so  in  love  with  your  own  body  that  you  would 
wish  to  call  it  into  life  again  and  forever ;  we  see  at  once 
that  no  moment  or  phase  of  development  could  be  chosen, 
except  perhaps  the  dying  moment,  the  least  desirable  of 
all,  and  that  the  particles  of  one's  body  have  served  their 
turn  in  myriad  other  bodies,  each  having  an  equally  valid 
claim  to  his  "property."  Besides  this,  the  absurdity  of  the 
whole  is  emphasized  by  the  crushing  fact  that  all  the 
organic  matter  of  the  world  has  been  used  over  and  over 
for  bodies,  and  the  earth  has  not  enough  hydrocarbons  to 
fit  out  again  with  bodies  a  small  fraction  of  the  souls  that 
have  lived  upon  it.  Doubtless  the  combined  weight  of  all 
the  organic  bodies  that  have  lived  on  the  earth  would  be 
many  times  the  total  weight  of  the  globe,  including  its 
minerals,  elements,  and  gases.  It  may  be  frankly  admitted 
that  no  bodily  resurrection  is  possible. 

And  it  is  as  certainly  undesirable.  The  old  dogma 
was  the  crudest  materialism,  wholly  unworthy  of  the  cred- 
ence of  those  who  pretended  to  believe  that  God  was  a 
.spirit,  and  that  they  were  his  children.  The  belief  in 
bodily  resurrection  was  a  natural  concomitant  of  the  age  of 
sensualism  before  the  mind  and  spirit  had  risen  to  their 
modern   heritage.      The   desire   for   such   a   resurrection 


IMMORTALITY.  359 

stamps  the  person  with  a  self-confessed  imperfection  of 
mental  and  moral  development.  The  impossibility  of  such 
a  resurrection  is  one  of  many  proofs  that  life  is  no  sensual- 
ist at  heart  and  that  ideality  is  the  final  outcome,  the  trend 
of  actuality.  Nature  compels  us  to  take  wings,  though 
the  sluggish  Psyche  lingers  lovingly  in  the  pretty  little 
cocoon  of  materiality  she  has  built  about  herself 

Is  it  perhaps  your  understanding,  reason,  or  intellect  that 
you  desire  to  perpetuate  forever  ?  Frankly,  now,  are  you 
so  in  love  with  your  mental  outfit?  In  your  more  modest 
and  sane  hours  are  you  not  sadly  conscious  how  very  im- 
perfect it  is  ?  While  we  are  young  and  very  conceited  we 
may  be  filled  with  self  satisfaction  and  trust  in  our  own 
judgment,  but  as  the  years  drag  by,  we,  looking  back  over 
the  past,  grow  more  and  more  conscious  that  our  intellect 
is  not  to  be  trusted.  Think  of  the  interminable  series  of 
blunders  of  which  your  life  is  the  record  ?  How  poorly 
you  have  misjudged  people  and  circumstances  !  How  your 
reason  has  fooled  you  many  times  and  again !  How  many 
illusions  and  delusions  have  you  lived  through  !  With 
what  sad  clearness  you  now  see  your  former  stupidities, 
and  with  what  blindness  you  fail  to  see  your  present  ones ! 
Looking  about  you,  you  find  others  equally  as  gifted  as 
yourself  holding  your  opinions  as  loathsome.  Looking 
above  you,  you  see  the  most  intellectual  and  the  most 
educated  diametrically  opposed  in  their  opinions  of  God, 
man,  and  nature.  Two  great  men,  two  brothers,  learned 
and  trained  in  dialectic  and  logic,  soon  grow  apart.  One 
becomes  a  cardinal  of  the  Romish  Church,  accepting  Papal 
infallibility  and  a  thousand  such  absurdities,  the  other  as 
firmly  convinced  that  the  fallacies  of  the  English  Church 
are  God's  gospel.  Looking  below  you,  you  see  the  great 
mass  of  men  wrecking  their  minds  and  lives  upon  a  thou- 
sand outrageous  beliefs  and  prejudices.  There  is  no  sadder 
spectacle  in  the  world  than  this — that  the  people  love  error. 


36o  IMMORTALITY. 

But  each  one,  with  imperturbable  conceit,  is  convinced  that 
he  sees  better  and  plainer  than  another.  Every  partisan^ 
Democrat  or  Republican,  has  no  sort  of  doubt  that  he  is 
right  about  every  financial  or  governmental  measure, 
though  he  has  never  studied  finance,  history,  or  political 
economy  five  minutes.  He  does  not  dream  that  he  is  a 
dupe  of  the  politicians  and  of  his  own  lack  of  intellect. 
All  history  is  a  tangle  of  such  poverty-stricken  intellec- 
tion. One  can  but  be  amazed  at  the  proneness  of  every- 
body to  see  things  and  do  things  every  way  but  the  right 
way.  And  this  is  the  kind  of  a  mental  equipment  you 
would  stamp  with  the  seal  of  eternity  ! 

Possibly  you  may  protest  that  it  is  a  more  perfect  and 
purified  intellect  that  you  wish.  Ah,  yes,  but  that  would 
not  be  your  intellect.  You  want  to  be  made  over,  made 
into  another  person.  That  would  not  be  your  immortality, 
but  that  of  another.  That  would  imply  that  it  is  pure  in- 
tellect and  perfect,  in  the  abstract,  that  you  are  interested 
in.  Have  you  shown  much  interest  in  that  sort  of  intellect 
in  the  past?  If  you  wish  such  an  immortality  of  a  per- 
fected intellect  you  must  certainly  possess  it  before  it  can 
be  made  everlasting. 

Perhaps,  again,  you  will  say  that  it  is  the  ever-progressive, 
ever-growing  intellect  you  desire.  This  is  subterfuge. 
That  is  not  what  you  wish  but  what  you  would  take  in  de- 
fault of  your  first  choice.  Lessing  said  that  if  God  held 
out  to  him  absolute  truth  in  one  hand  and  in  the  other  the 
everlasting  search  for  truth,  he  would  choose  the  latter. 
But  the  condition  of  everlasting  search  would  be  the  con- 
dition of  everlasting  imperfection  of  intellect.  Lessing's 
choice  seems  to  me  impious. 

I  therefore  conclude  that  at  heart  you  do  not  wish  to 
eternalize  your  crude,  imperfect  intellect,  and  that  the  sole 
method  of  getting  an  exalted  and  perfected  intellect  is  to 
cultivate  it  here  and  now.     Have  you  in  the  past  obeyed 


IMMORTALITY.  361 

reason  and  not  passion  or  self-interest  ?  Have  you  studied 
logic,  history,  and  science  with  a  sincere  desire  to  do  your 
political  and  social  duty,  and  to  free  yourself  from  preju- 
dice, error,  superstition,  and  conceit?  If  not,  why  should 
God  suddenly  endow  you  with  a  perfect  intellect  ready- 
made?  Is  it  God's  way  in  this  world  to  give  excellencies 
unasked  and  unearned  ?  Rest  assured  He  will  not  do  it  at 
your  dying  hour.  It  is  no  particular  merit  in  you  to  die; 
why  should  you  be  rewarded  with  a  new  intellect  then  ? 

Or,  again,  you  may  say  that  it  is  not  so  much  your  in- 
tellect that  you  wish  to  make  immortal  as  it  is  your 
emotional  nature,  affection,  etc.  Love  and  friendship,  you 
complain,  are  cut  off  by  death,  and  the  tendrils  of  the  heart 
die  because  they  find  nothing  to  cling  to  or  rest  upon. 
You  would  like  to  renew  beyond  the  grave  the  love  and 
sympathy  that  has  made  the  earth-life  endurable,  and  even 
beautiful.  Now  is  this,  in  very  truth,  just  so?  Are  you 
really  satisfied  with  your  devotion  and  love  ?  Have  not 
your  outgoings  of  the  heart  been  quite  fickle,  illogic, 
selfish,  and  calculating  ?  Has  not  your  love  and  gratitude 
been  often  a  lively  sense  of  benefits  to  come?  Has  your 
love  to  woman  not  been  of  the  "  Kreutzer-Sonata  "  type,  a 
little  better  and  more  subtly-concealed,  perhaps,  but  at 
heart  the  same  ?  If  you  are  a  woman,  have  you  been  seek- 
ing to  get  or  to  give  love,  and  has  your  little  affection  been 
but  payment  for  protection  and  a  home  ?  Have  you 
chosen  true  and  noble  friends  and  been  true  and  noble  to 
them  ?  Has  your  charity  been  but  alms-giving  without 
kind  sympathy  and  helpfulness  ?  Have  you  as  married 
folk,  perhaps,  been,  as  the  cant  phrase  has  it,  "  devoted  to 
each  other,"  but  oblivious  of  the  duty  of  affection  toward 
the  rest  of  the  world — grinning  examples  of  egoisme  a 
dejix?  Is  your  family  a  fetich,  an  enlarged  sort  of  selfish- 
ness ?  Do  you  at  heart  care  much  for  anybody  except 
your  own  precious  self?  And  a  too  exclusive  love,  even 
3« 


362  IMMORTALITY. 

of  the  purest  type,  may  be  sin  in  God's  eyes.  If  you  bind 
all  your  affection  upon  one  weak  life  you  risk  a  precious 
value  upon  too  single  and  narrow  an  object,  and  deprive 
others  of  the  sympathy  that  need  it  more.  "  Just  wrapt  up 
in  one,"  as  the  sentimental  jargon  has  it,  is  often,  if  not 
always,  a  pleasant  way  of  great  sin.  Affection  may  become 
morbid — a  disease — quite  as  well  as  any  abuse  or  exag- 
geration of  any  other  characteristic. 

I  take  it  that  they  who  are  the  most  satisfied  with  the 
strength,  purity,  and  constancy  of  their  love  and  emotional 
nature  are  precisely  they  that  have  neither  actual  strength, 
purity,  nor  constancy  of  sentiment,  and  are  thus  accurately 
they  that  should  not  have  immortality. 

Lastly,  if  neither  body,  intellect,  nor  the  affectional 
nature  are  such  as  you  wish  made  eternal,  are  you  any 
better  contented  with  your  moral  nature?  The  question  at 
once  raises  a  smile.  The  feeling  of  our  own  ethical 
unworthiness  has  crystallized  into  the  great  Christian 
dogma  of  Christ's  vicarious  sacrifice :  in  the  words  of  the 
old  hymn,  "  Jesus  died  and  paid  it  all,  all  the  debt  I  owe." 
No  man  hoped  to  get  to  heaven  on  his  own  merits.  Much 
of  the  zeal  of  religion  has  consisted  in  the  joy  of  the  belief 
that  by  a  sleight  of-hand  trick  a  big  sponge  of  forgiveness 
was  wiped  over  the  ethical  debit  and  credit  account  by  the 
lacrimose  deity,  whose  occupation,  as  Heine  said,  was  to 
forgive.  History  is  one  long,  monotonous  list  of  man's 
sins  and  inhumanities.  I  think  it  probable  that  you  will 
not  urge  the  ethical  aspect ;  I  would  leave  that  plea  aside. 
We  all  know  that  we  are  very  much  like  a  lot  of  pigs,  each 
after  the  most  and  best  corn  and  the  warmest  bed.  The 
amazing  immorality  of  trying  to  get  to  heaven  on  another's 
merits  was  the  most  brazen  example  of  how  little  heaven- 
liness  there  was  in  the  heaven-hunters  and  heaven-sealers. 
Of  course,  too,  the  desire  for  heaven  itself,  the  desire  for 
one's  happiness,  was  immoral  when  conditioned  upon  the 


IMMORTALITY.  363 

misery  of  others.  Nature  in  this  respect  is  better  than 
man,  denying  him  his  childish  materialistic  desires  and 
forcing  him  to  wait  for  immortality  until  he  can  learn  to 
live  in  the  spirit  and  seek  no  selfish  heaven. 

Just  as  the  body  is  ever  changing,  and  it  is  impossible  to 
seize  upon  any  hour  when  we  could  eternalize  it,  except  at 
the  undesirable  death-hour,  so  it  is  the  same  in  reference 
to  intellect,  love,  and  morality.  There  are  no  two  days  in 
life  when  we  are  the  same.  As  to  intellect,  we  have  little 
before  adult  life  is  reached,  and  most  people  have  little 
after  fifty  or  sixty  years.  It  is  proverbial  that  no  one 
changes  his  opinion  after  that  age,  but  lives  on  old  preju- 
dices and  ideas.  The  mental  powers  get  into  ruts  and 
habits,  true  reason  being  abrogated.  As  to  love,  we  laugh 
at  our  fickleness,  and  our  habits  and  ideals  of  friendship 
get  sordid  as  each  year  strips  off  the  freedom  and  expan- 
siveness  of  youth  and  the  dear,  cold  ghost  of  self  is  more 
exclusively  worshiped.  And  our  ethical  standards  change 
with  each  day's  passing.  We  have  at  every  hour  to  clutch 
ourselves  by  the  throat  and  cry,  "  Stay  !  Who  art  thou  ?" 
And  lo  1  while  we  ask  our  protean  self  the  question,  we 
have  become  another.  We  seek  perpetuity  of  existence 
for  something  ever  becoming  other.  We  seek  personal 
identity  after  death,  but  we  have  no  personal  identity  before 
death — how  then  can  we  have  it  afterward  ?  Do  you  not 
see  that  what  makes  you  recognizable,  different  from  other 
individuals,  and  what  would  make  personal  immortality 
possible  depends  upon  the  accidents  of  organization, — 
depends  firstly  upon  the  bodily  peculiarity,  and  secondly 
upon  imperfections  of  mind  that  you  do  not  wish  to  per- 
petuate ?  Twins  sometimes  wear  knots  of  ribbon  as  sig- 
nals whereby  their  friends  may  recognize  them.  Our  faces 
and  bodies  are  but  such  little  symbols  or  signals  that  our 
souls  have  hung  out  for  the  day.  Divest  your  best  friend 
of  his  body,  and  would  you  recognize  him  ?     Have  you 


3^4  IMMORTALITY. 

ever  thought  how  the  photograph  of  your  friend's  soul 
would  look  ?  If  bodily  form  and  imperfections  make  up 
the  most  of  what  we  call  individuality,  it  becomes  evident 
that  in  casting  off  imperfection  we  become  less  narrow, 
less  individual.  As  you  become  freed  from  the  cramp- 
ing littleness  of  self-love  and  the  bonds  of  self-gratifi- 
cation, as  you  rise  into  the  life  of  the  spirit,  you  find 
yourself  less  individual.  One  fitted  for  a  true  heaven 
would  not  care  for  the  old  immortality.  What  is  good  to 
carry  over  into  the  future  life  is  not  so  much  personal 
identity  as  personal  nonidentity,  not  so  much  the  imper- 
fections that  make  us  individuals  as  the  perfections  that 
free  us  from  individualism.  We  must  lose  our  life  to  find 
it.  We  have  overestimated  the  value  of  individuality. 
Self-consciousness  has  become  hypertrophied,  and  the 
smnmum  bonum  of  life  is  held  to  be  the  preservation  of  a 
little  puckered-up  individuality.  This  over-development 
of  individualism  is  doubtless  due  to  the  fierce  struggle  man 
has  had  to  elevate  himself  out  of  savagery.  It  has  been 
possible  only  through  excessive  carefulness  and  love  of  the 
ego.  The  struggle  for  existence  is  now  taking  on  class 
and  corporate  characteristics,  so  that  the  common  weal  is 
an  ideal  quite  as  much  as  individual  satisfaction  and  safety. 
Hence  the  exaggeration  of  personality  may  now  return  to 
something  like  a  healthy  normalism.  As  a  natural  out- 
growth and  consequence  of  this  over-development  of  the 
individual  consciousness,  there  came  the  absurd  attempt  to 
carry  over  into  the  after-life  the  same  sort  of  existence  that 
had  been  developed  here, — consisting  in  a  neglect  of  the 
actual  world  of  one's  descendants,  an  ignoring  of  death 
that  ends  the  body  and  products  of  organization,  and  a 
failure  to  see  that  a  future  life  after  death  must  be  a  life  of 
the  spirit,  of  perfections,  and  of  the  common  life,  not  of 
peculiarities  and  imperfections. 

If  this  seems  an  aery  height  and  a  too  rare  air,  it  argues 


IMMORTALITY.  365 

against  your  preparation  for  the  only  desirable  as  well  as 
the  only  possible  kind  of  immortality.  It  argues  against 
you  just  in  the  same  way  that  your  horror  of  death  does. 
It  is  only  participation  in  the  divine  life  of  the  spirit  that 
can  see  death  as  right  and  good.  Death  comes  to  shatter 
our  baseless  trust  in  the  evanescent  physical,  and  teach  us 
dependence  upon  the  everlasting  spiritual.  They  dread 
death  whose  life  is  of  the  physical  type.  God  never  gave 
to  man  a  greater  blessing,  after  life  itself,  than  death,  and 
nothing  more  strikingly  proves  the  divine  government  of 
the  world  than  the  certainty  of  its  coming  to  us  all.  If 
death  is  your  enemy,  life  is  not  your  friend.  The  brutal 
attempt  to  ignore  the  fact,  the  belief  that  the  body,  with  its 
pack  of  heathenish  appetites  and  needs,  could  push  through 
death  and  come  out  fresh  and  renewed  on  the  other  side  is 
the  very  insanity  of  individualism  and  the  intoxication  of 
materialism.  The  mourning,  shudder,  gloom,  and  horror 
of  death — God-sent  if  anything  is — is  practical  pessimism 
and  reckless  atheism.  Death's  one  lesson  is  that  we  must 
love  and  cultivate  what  he  cannot  touch.  One  who  has 
lived  a  life  of  kindness  and  spirituality  has  no  horror  of 
death,  and  to  him  it  has  little  mystery.  But  to  him  whose 
divinity  has  been  self  and  whose  religion  the  worship  ot 
his  physiologic  senses,  death  must  be  the  ugliest  of  enemies 
who  is  to  rob  him  of  his  all.  Did  you  ever  notice  how  life 
is  plastic  and  free  when  first  fashioning  for  itself  a  body  ? 
"  All  heaven  lies  about  us  in  our  infancy."  In  youth  we 
are  unselfish,  aspiring,  and  noble.  As  the  years  go  by  the 
power  of  the  organization,  the  material,  grows,  and  limits 
more  and  more  the  freedom  of  the  spirit.  Frankenstein 
turns  upon  its  maker.  With  age  men  get  narrow,  cold, 
calculating;  women  snaky,  scheming,  cruel.  The  soul 
finds  itself  more  and  more  the  slave  instead  of  the  master, 
and  by  and  by  when  the  slavery  becomes  unendurable,  it 
takes  flight,  and  this  you  call  death.     It  is  the  body's  re- 


366  IMMORTALITY. 

ward  for  insubordination.  I  think  we  deserve  little  sym- 
pathy for  dying.  Most  of  us  have  well-merited  death 
before  it  comes — I  speak,  of  course,  only  of  the  death  of 
those  in  life's  afternoon.  Few  keep  the  young  life  pliant 
and  free  beyond  the  age  of  fifty.  If  people  could  see  that 
life  is  the  maker  and  molder  of  organization,  and  if  they 
would  seek  immortality  upon  earth,  I  believe  men  might 
come  to  live  a  hundred  years.  Trees  learn  to  live  thou- 
sands of  years,  but  they  keep  youth,  and  spring,  and  trust, 
and  love  forever  nestling  with  the  birds  among  the  rejuv- 
enescent leaves  of  spring.  We  die  not  because  the  body  is 
weak,  but  because  it  has  become  too  strong.  We  die  be- 
cause there  is  no  real  continuance  and  strength  in  anything 
but  the  nonphysical,  and  we  have  trusted  in  the  physical. 
Matter  without  free  life  is  inert,  moved  only  from  without : 
the  dead  body  is  simply  matter  without  life.  It  is  not  the 
blacksmith's  arm  that  is  strong:  without  nerve-force  it 
cannot  raise  an  ounce,  cannot  raise  itself  Whence  the 
nerve-force  ?  From  the  ganglionic  gray  cells  of  the  spinal 
cord  and  brain.  And  whence  these  little  gray  cells  ?  The 
dear,  stupid  physiologist  has  now  reached  his  limit,  and 
you  can  confidently  answer  for  him  that  it  was  Life  created 
these  things.  Life  that  existed  before  muscles,  nerves,  and 
cells,  and  that  slowly  fashioned  them ;  Life,  an  order  of 
existence  in  no  imaginable  way  analogous  to,  or  to  be 
confounded  with,  matter  or  mechanics.  There  is  in  the 
history  of  thought  no  more  ludicrous  and  dismal  failure 
than  the  attempt  to  explain  life  in  terms  of  mechanics.  The 
hope  of  the  materialist  that  science  would  prove  his  preju- 
dice is  torn  to  tatters.  The  children  of  the  spirit  are 
amazed  at  the  bat-blind  inability  to  see  the  fact, — to  see 
that  life  is  more  certain  and  enduring  than  matter,  soul 
than  sense.  The  organs  of  the  body  are  changed,  diseased, 
die;  the  body  itself  dies;  generations  of  bodies  die,  but 
like  a  containing  cord  of  silk,  on  which  all  the  glittering 


IMMORTALITY.  367 

beads  of  flesh  are  strung,  there  is  the  soul,  the  life,  ever  the 
same,  persisting  unchanged  through  all  change,  giving 
unity  to  diversity,  molding,  making,  discarding,  choosing, 
healing,  working  to  far-away  ends  with  blind,  and  dead, 
and  obstinate  materials.  You  love  the  flesh  over-much, 
and  jealous  life  says  to  you,  "  Take  it  then,  this  so  loved 
and  wondrous  flesh ;  me  you  have  not  loved," — and  lo  ! 
the  dead  body,  useless,  decaying,  lies  before  you.  Let  no 
materialistic  misreading  of  science  hoodwink  you  into  any 
blurring  of  the  outlines  between  matter  and  life.*  The 
two  are  as  far  apart  as  heaven  and  earth,  are  as  dissimilar 
as  thought  can  conceive, — perhaps,  in  a  final  analysis,  are 
the  only  two  things  of  the  universe.  There  is  no  fact  of 
science  showing  the  faintest  warrant  for  confounding  the 
two.  Even  Huxley  calls  materialism  the  most  baseless  of 
all  dogmas.  It  will  probably  be  found  that  there  is  but 
one  element,  of  which  all  others  are  duplications  and  com- 
binations, atoms  being  but  centers  of  force.  But  life  is 
irresolvable  into  any  form  of  matter  or  mechanical  energy. 
It  is  not  only  unthinkable  that  matter  could  originate  life, 
but  it  is  demonstrably  absurd.  No  scientist  to-day  believes 
in  spontaneous  generation.  Onine  vivuni  ex  vivo  is  an 
axiom.  The  plant  has  no  nervous  system  and  yet  has 
every  physiologic  function  possessed  by  the  human  body. 
It  has  contractility,  irritability,  respiration,  anabolism,  cata- 
bolism,  and  reproductivity, — that  is,  it  has  spontaneous 
movement,  it  responds  to  stimulation,  it  breathes,  it  assimi- 
lates, it  excretes,  it  begets  its  like, — and  physiologically 
this  is  all  you  can  do.  Nay,  more  than  this,  even  a  drop 
of  the  jelly-like  protoplasm  that  makes  up  the  basis  of  all 
cell-structures,  animal  or  vegetable,  has  also  all  of  these 


*  Those  who  think  this  view  is  the  voice  of  faith  and  not  of  true  science 
may  profitably  read  a  little  book  that  has  come  to  my  notice  since  writing  these 
pages,  "  Life  Theories  and  Religious  Thought,"  by  Lionel  S.  Beale. 


368  IMMORTALITY. 

qualities  or  powers.  There  are  bundles  of  wholly  struc- 
tureless,unorganized  jelly  that  exhibit  these  capacities  in 
a  wonderful  degree.  There  is,  for  instance.  Hydra  viridis, 
that  has  no  eyes  and  yet  sees,  no  brain  or  nerves  and  yet 
lies  in  wait  for  prey,  pursues  and  fights,  or  flees  from 
danger.  Turned  inside  out,  it  lives  and  digests  its  food  as 
well  as  before.  It  holds  live  worms  down  with  an  impro- 
vised arm  when  they  try  to  get  out  of  its  stomach.  Any 
part  reproduces  all.  Cut  off  the  bottom  of  its  stomach  and 
it  goes  on  eating,  quite  untroubled  by  the  little  accident, — 
and  so  on.  A  great,  wise,  blind  man  has  defined  evolution, 
or  life,  as  the  integration  of  matter  and  the  dissipation  of 
motion,  during  which  the  matter  passes  from  an  indefinite, 
incoherent  homogeneity  to  a  definite,  coherent  heterogene- 
ity, and  during  which  the  motion  undergoes  a  parallel 
transformation.  Some  one  else  improved  upon  this  by 
saying  that  it  was  "  a  change  from  a  no-howish,  untalka- 
boutable  all-alikeness,  to  a  some-howish  and  in  general 
talkaboutable  not-all-alikeness,  by  continuous  something- 
elsifications  and  all-togetherations."  Schelling  said  that 
life  was  the  tendency  to  individuation.  But  the  crystal  or 
the  planet  shows  that,  and  they  are  not  living.  As  the 
hand  cannot  grasp  itself,  neither  can  life  define  itself.  All 
definitions  I  have  seen  miss  the  essential  and  primal  char- 
acteristics of  spontaneous  movement.  But  all  definitions 
begin  by  begging  the  question, — assuming  the  thing  ex- 
plained. The  truth  is  that  there  is  no  definition  or  expla- 
nation possible.  The  dualism  of  matter  and  life  must  be 
accepted.  There  is  no  monism  can  bridge  the  gulf  between 
mechanics  and  life.  Inorganic  matter  with  its  inherent 
forces  and  laws  cannot  be  conceived  as  ever  coming  into  or 
as  passing  out  of  existence.  From  all  eternity  it  was  as  it 
is,  and  so  it  will  remain.  The  physical  universe  shows  no 
hint  of  design,  no  glimpse  of  freedom,  no  trace  of  intelli- 
gence, no  suggestion  of  a  maker  or  God.     It  has  no  power 


IMMORTALITY.  369 

of  choice,  no  spontaneous  motion.  But  the  merest  speck 
of  living  matter  is  utterly  and  absolutely  different*  It  may 
have  eyes  or  no  eyes  and  yet  it  sees,  ears  or  not  and  yet  it 
hears,  nerves  or  not  and  yet  it  feels  and  reacts,  brain  or  not 
and  yet  it  thinks  and  plans,  and  acts  in  accordance  with 
intellectual  resolves.  The  dead  body  of  your  child  is  most 
inconceivably  different  from  the  living  body  of  an  hour  ago. 
The  one  fundamental  mystery  of  the  explainable  world  is 
why  life  seeks  objectification  in  material  forms,  and  why  it 
seeks  it  with  such  vehemence  and  ardor.  Life  seems  to 
bite  at  matter  as  if  with  famishing  hunger.  One  wonders 
if  from  some  other  planet  life  is  being  suddenly  starved  out 
or  banished  by  some  catastrophe,  and  as  a  consequence 
there  is  thence  an  over-emigration  of  the  hungry  Huns 
upon  our  earth.  Certain  confused  and  confusion-breeding 
philosophers  in  the  interests  of  a  theoretic  monism  or 
pantheism  pretend  to  find  or  to  believe  that  the  organic  is 
born  out  of  the  inorganic,  that  the  physical  world  shows 
evidence  of  design,  that  life  and  mentality  were  implicate 
and  latent  in  preexistent  matter.  Yet  they  will  accept  the 
evidence  against  spontaneous  generation  derived  from  the 
fact  that  if  you  kill  all  organic  life  by  intense  heat  and  then 
exclude  life  from  without  you  will  never  find  life  to  arise. 
But  it  is  plain  that  in  the  condensation  of  the  dust  of  space 
into  suns  and  planets  all  organic  life  was  killed  in  the  hottest 
of  all  conceivable  heat.  But  as  the  planets  cool,  life  appears. 
It  must  have  come  from  without,  and  must  therefore  be  an 
universal  self-existent  power.  Why,  or  how,  or  whence 
life  comes  to  us  we  do  not  know  now,  but  the  transcendent 
miracle  is  ever  before  our  eyes :  infinitely  rich  and  free,  life 
is  filling,  thrilling,  surcharging  every  molecule  of  matter  to 
which  with  wondrous  power  and  ingenuity  it  can  gain 
access.  It  covers  every  thousandth  of  an  inch  of  the 
earth's  surface,  dives  into  the  deepest  ocean  depths,  fills  the 
air  as  high  as  the  mountain  tops,  ever  unsatisfied,  ever 
32 


37©  IMMORTALITY. 

grasping  up  a  million  million  renaissant  forms,  never  rest- 
ing, nev^r  baffled.  Before  this  omnipresent  god  one  stands 
in  rapt  amazement  and  worship.  To  matter,  then,  life  first 
brought,  and  still  ever  brings,  the  power  of  organization,  of 
adaptation,  of  spontaneous  energy,  and  of  movement.  But 
when  the  death  of  the  organization  takes  place,  the  life  that 
preceded  and  formed  it  is  not  lessened  or  affected.  When 
the  watch  wears  out  does  it  prove  that  the  watchmaker  is 
dead  ?  It  is  more  rational  to  suppose  that  the  watchmaker 
has  kept  on  with  his  work,  that  he  has  made  and  will  make 
many  more  watches,  and  I  therefore  judge  that  the  life  of 
each  of  us,  that  existed  before  our  bodies,  that  formed  our 
bodies,  will  still  form  other  bodies  after  ours.  The  Oriental 
doctrine  of  the  transmigration  of  souls  is  not  to  be  accepted 
in  its  crude  details,  but  it  is  doubtless  a  great  truth.  It  is 
more  rational  and  more  consonant  with  what  we  know  of 
life,  than  the  theory  of  wasted  life  implicate  in  the  barbaric 
notion  of  sending  numberless  millions  of  souls  to  hell  to  do 
nothing  but  suffer  useless  pain,  and  other  millions  to  heaven 
to  suffer  (I  use  the  word  advisedly)  useless  pleasure.  Any 
theory  of  immortality  that  rests  upon  the  assumption  of 
uselessness  and  waste  may  be  quickly  set  aside.  Just  as 
matter  and  force  are  indestructible,  various  forms  of  force 
being  interchangeable,  so  it  must  be  with  life.  There  must 
be  a  conservation  of  life-energy  just  as  rigid,  and  this  truth 
must  remake  and  remold  the  whole  conception  of  immor- 
tality. When  a  mechanic  force  disappears  in  one  phase,  it 
at  once  reappears  in  another  aspect.  So  vegetable,  animal, 
and  mental  life  are  but  different  aspects  of  life-force,  and 
suffer  no  loss  when  transformed  one  into  the  other,  or  when 
the  body  disappears  altogether.  And  as  it  is  the  inherent 
nature  of  force  never  to  rest,  so  there  is  no  rest  for  life. 
Banishment  of  life  to  a  heaven  of  inaction  is  as  impossible 
as  it  is  absurd. 

This  extension  of  the  law  of  the  conservation  of  force  to 


IMMORTALITY.  371 

things  biologic  and  psychic  is  a  two-edged  sword :  it  offers 
conclusive  evidence  of  the  fallacy  of  the  materialist  and 
believer.  There  is  no  annihilation ;  your  life,  at  death,  not 
only  may  not  stop  but  cannot  stop.  Life  is  as  inextin- 
guishable as  physical  force.  On  the  other  hand,  this 
sword  deals  the  death  blow  to  two  equally  shallow  fallacies 
of  believers.  Just  so  sure  as  it  insures  the  preservation  of 
your  life,  of  all  that  is  worth  preservation,  just  so  sure  it 
denies  the  possibility  of  preserving  what  was  bound  up 
with  and  produced  by  organization, — that  is  individuality 
and  personal  identity.  These  things,  if  not  entirely,  are 
certainly  largely  the  products  of  your  peculiar  physical 
and  physiologic  organization.  Whatever  is  born  of  the 
flesh  must  perish  with  the  flesh  ;  what  is  born  of  the  spirit 
shall  inherit  eternal  life.  But  the  profoundest  and  most 
distinguishing  rebuke  is  given  the  unscientific,  puerile,  sel- 
fish assumption  of  the  waste,  loss,  and  uselessness  of  life 
involved  in  the  old  theory  of  heaven  and  hell.  When  from 
a  chemic  compound  you  take  away  and  liberate  one  ele- 
ment or  compound  radicle,  does  it  then  shoot  off  into 
space,  to  "  flock  all  by  itself"  for  eternity  ?  By  no  means  ! 
It  at  once  rushes  into  a  new  combination  with  its  nearest 
neighbor,  quickly  picking  up  again  the  round  of  its  duty 
and  function.  The  curious  notion  that  after  having  done 
work  in  one  body,  life  or  souls  should  at  once  rush  off  to 
some  far-away  star,  there  to  sing  or  howl  for  eternity,  was 
a  childish  absurdity.  One  wonders  where  even  an  omni- 
potent God  could  get  material  for  such  an  amazing  manu- 
facture and  loss  of  souls.  The  theory  also  forgot  that  logic 
demands  that  what  should  live  forever  in  the  future  must 
perforce  have  lived  forever  in  the  past,  A  rope,  if  it  have 
one  end,  must  have  two  ends.  What,  therefore,  have  our 
souls  been  doing  during  the  past  eternity  ?  The  truth  is  that, 
absolutely  speaking,  there  cannot  be  souls,  but  only  soul. 
Life  is  a  unit,  and  indivisible.     The  tiniest  bit  of  bioplasm 


37»  IMMORTALITY. 

holds  and  represents  all  of  life.  Neither  you  nor  it  are  separ- 
able from  the  whole.  There  may  be  education  and  progres- 
sive evolution  of  life  as  a  whole,  but  there  can  be  no  indi- 
vidual and  selfish  salvation  apart  from  the  salvation  of  all 
other  souls.  The  idea  that  release  from  the  body  at  once 
releases  a  soul  from  action,  duty,  and  the  work  of  life,  is  an 
illogicality  that  could  have  arisen  in  no  mind  conversant 
with  the  demonstrated  law  of  the  nonwastage  of  force  in 
any  work  of  energy  elsewhere.  Life  is  never  tired;  it  is 
the  body  that  requires  rest,  not  the  spirit.  The  old  doc- 
trine of  heaven,  an  eternity  of  laziness,  was  the  sigh  of  the 
sluggish  flesh  whipped  to  ceaseless  work  by  the  unresting 
life.  The  desire  of  heaven  was  the  desire  of  eternal  death. 
This  extension  of  the  idea  of  the  nonwastage,  the  rigid 
conservation  and  interconvertibility  of  force  to  things  of 
life,  gains  a  new  significance  and  grandeur  when  we  con- 
sider that  whatever  proves  the  immortality  of  man  proves 
the  immortality  of  every  other  animal  or  vegetable  form. 
The  tree  and  horse  have  a  soul  quite  as  well  as  you,  and 
must  live  after  death  quite  as  surely  as  you  will.  It  is  the 
flimsiest  of  conceits  that  makes  men  think  they  are  en- 
dowed with  a  special  sort  of  soul  or  divine  life,  different 
from  that  of  animals  or  plants.  Don't  flatter  yourself 
God  takes  quite  the  same  loving  pains  and  care  in  the 
elimination  of  a  leaf  that  he  does  of  a  brain-cell.  Man  is 
but  a  small  part  of  the  animal  world,  and  the  whole  animal 
world  is  but  a  small  part  of  the  total  life  of  the  globe. 
Don't  despise  the  vegetable  kingdom  :  it  can  do  something 
you  cannot  do — make  living  matter  out  of  mineral  sub- 
stances. You  could  not  live  a  day  without  the  food  fur- 
nished you  by  "  your  brothers,  the  plants,"  Hence  if 
human  life  or  souls  cannot  be  sent  off"  into  space  to  do 
nothing,  neither  can  the  souls  of  animals  and  plants.  If 
we  are  to  have  our  heaven,  they  must  have  theirs  also. 
Does  not  this  tangential  theory  begin  to  be  clumsy  and 


IMMORTALITY.  373 

work  with  huge  creakings  and  difficulties  ?     It  looks  like 
rednctio  ad  absurdum. 

Not  only  is  the  tangential  theory  contradictory  of  all 
physical  analogies  and  all  known  laws,  but  it  is  positively 
immoral,  it  is  but  a  refined  selfishness.  Worldliness  is 
none  the  less  sinful  because  it  is  other-worldliness.  If  bil- 
lions of  souls  could  thus  be  wasted  in  an  eternity  of  useless 
pain  or  pleasure,  could  thus — drunken  with  individuation 
— hug  their  own  sweet  ghosts  for  never-ending  time,  then 
were  life  a  farce,  the  universe  a  huge,  meaningless  machine 
for  grinding  out  waste  and  useless  souls.  But  if  all  life, 
past  or  future,  is  one  and  indivisible,  purposive,  educational, 
then  the  world  becomes  full  of  meaning  and  the  face  of  the 
Father,  Life,  smiles  out  at  us  from  every  living  thing.  The 
faith  of  all  good  men — that  goodness  is  at  the  heart  of  things 
— is  justified.  The  Earth  becomes  our  home,  that  we  can 
love ;  our  Father  ever  dwelleth  here ;  we  cannot  be  ban- 
ished. When  we  have  finished  our  task,  when  our  body 
has  worn  out,  tireless  life,  of  which  we  are  the  children  and 
heirs,  gives  us  here  and  now  other  work  to  do. 

To  matter,  this  tremendous  cosmical  game  of  incarnation 
can  mean  nothing.  We  see  the  dead  flesh  break  up  into 
simpler  chemic  forms  and  the  atoms  finally  spin  off  un- 
altered by  their  flesh-dance,  again  to  be  caught  up  by  the 
mystic  and  unseen  Master,  again  to  be  pressed  into  organic 
forms, — forms  that  like  empty  seashells  only  show  where 
life  has  been.  And  so  on  forever.  But  to  life  some  edu- 
cative purpose  must  be  operative  through  it  all.  Life  that 
made  eyes  must  see  more  than  eyes;  life  that  made  brains 
must  know  more  than  brains.  There  is,  doubtless,  pain  and 
strain ;  but  is  there  to  be  no  ultimate  justification  ?  We 
may  catch  glimpses  of  reasons.  Do  we  not  see  an  increase 
both  of  quantity  and  quality  of  life  in  geologic  times  ?  Is 
life  trying  to  do  away  with  death  and  heredity  ?  Are  they 
but  makeshifts,  death  but  a  discarding  of  too  obstinate 


374  IMMORTALITY. 

material  ?  birth  but  a  retempering  and  reworking  of  the 
same  material  ?  heredity  but  the  temporary  means  of 
passing  life  and  its  experiences  onward  until  death  and 
birth  shall  be  found  unnecessary  in  a  growing  command  of 
chemic  and  physical  forces  that  shall  banish  old  age  out 
of  the  world  ?  There  is  no  inherent  reason  why  a  body 
should  grow  decrepit.  If  it  can  be  made  to  preserve  its 
suppleness  for  fifty  years,  why  not  for  a  thousand  ?  It  may 
transpire  that  the  dream  of  an  elixir  of  life  may  come  true 
through  scientific  progress  despite  the  savage  death-blow 
given  it  by  Brown-Sequard.  The  more  sin,  selfishness, 
and  wrong  there  is,  the  shorter  is  the  average  length  of 
human  lives.  If  you  will  look  into  the  rich  and  awful 
science  of  statistics  you  will  find  proof  of  this  in  every 
class  of  society.  When  we  apply  ourselves  to  enrich  and 
lengthen  our  life-time  with  the  same  zeal  we  now  use  in 
killing  each  other,  when  the  endowments  of  the  world's 
scientific  schools  equal  the  cost  of  the  world's  armies, 
then  there  will  be  a  very  different  life-table  found  in  the 
insurance  offices. 

Finally,  with  mournful,  echoing  recurrence  comes  the  old 
question :  How  much  of  individuality  persists  and  passes 
untouched  through  death's  fingers  ?  How  far  does  the 
graduate  life  carry  with  it  the  results  of  experience  ?  I 
would  answer :  All  that  you  ought  to  desire,  all  that  is  best, 
all  that  you  will  want  when  you  fully  understand  how 
little  and  poor  is  individuality  and  that  there  is  something 
including  it  and  far  better.  I  have  a  strange  inability, 
personally,  to  understand  the,  to  me,  absurd  hunger  after 
personal  identity.  It  appears  to  me  a  childish  obtuseness 
of  character.  The  great  and  glorious  freeness  and  large- 
ness of  life,  the  decentralized,  impersonal  quality  of  it, 
seems  to  be  unappreciated.  I  do  not  see  how  people  can 
fail  to  understand  that  personal  identity  is  not  only  impos- 
sible, does  not  exist  now  and  here,  but  that  the  desire  of 


IMMORTALITY.  375 

it  is  the  renunciation  of  progress.  We  grow  and  advance 
only  by  change,  only  by  breaking  up  identity  and  becoming 
other.  Think  also  of  the  lack  of  identity  or  individuality 
in  nature.  There  is  no  personality  and  individualism  there, 
and  yet  there  is  something  that  includes  personality  and 
is  much  more.  There  is  will,  consciousness,  intelligence, 
life, — but  not  identity  or  individuality.  So  the  life  that  is 
the  heart  of  us  invites  us  to  leave  our  little  self  and  find  a 
larger  self  Religion  is  our  yes  to  that  invitation.  Mate- 
rialism and  pessimism  is  the  saying  no  to  it.  The  immor- 
tality that  is  alone  possible  or  desirable  is  the  losing  our 
life,  the  individual  identity-loving  life,  again  to  find  it  as 
the  impersonal  but  richer,  deeper  life  of  nature  and  God. 
God  denies  you  an  immortality  of  individualism  and 
identity  because  He  loves  you  so  well  that  He  refuses  you 
your  crude,  childish  desire  in  order  to  offer  you  something 
infinitely  better.  People  do  not  seem  to  see  how  narrow, 
small,  and  partial  is  the  dissociate  speck  of  the  individual, 
and  that  as  an  individual  progresses  in  all  the  virtues  of 
character  he  evermore  becomes  proportionally  less  indi- 
vidual and  less  centralized,  always  more  like  the  divine 
prototype  of  his  impersonal  father.  Life.  The  love  of  in- 
dividualism is  the  love  of  imperfection.  This  may  to  some 
seem  a  hard  doctrine.  It  is  not  perhaps  an  easy  task  for 
the  butterfly  to  break  its  way  out  through  the  million-fold 
bonds  of  its  cocoon,  but  when  risen  into  the  large  air  and 
sunshine  does  it  regret  the  birth-struggle?  They  who 
think  they  are  being  cheated  of  reality  for  a  metaphysic 
illusion  will  find,  in  breaking  through  the  bonds  of  flesh, 
that  they  also  have  brought  with  them  splendid  wings  for 
rising  in  the  no  less  real  but  rarer  air  of  spiritual  trust  in 
life.  It  is  not  that  we  love  less  the  thousand  ties  of  flesh, 
home,  and  kindred,  but  that  in  recognizing  the  paternity 
and  fraternity  of  all  life,  we  find  love  commensurate  with 
that  life.     I  do  not  think  there  was  any  cold,  stony  harsh- 


376  IMMORTALITY. 

ness  in  the  face  of  Jesus  when  He  uttered  those  most  pro- 
foundly significant  of  all  words,  "  Who  is  my  mother,  and 
who  are  my  brethren  ?  Whosoever  shall  do  the  will  of 
my  Father,  the  same  is  my  brother,  and  sister,  and  mother." 
What  a  recall  to  the  common  life  of  the  spirit !  What 
unity  with  the  common  life  based  upon  loving  obedience 
to  the  will  of  the  Father.  What  a  wonderful  rebuke  of 
the  love  of  individualism.  He  did  not  love  His  mother 
less,  but  humanity  more.  The  more  we  rise  into  that  im- 
personal atmosphere  the  more  are  we  careless  of  the  fate 
of  personal  identity.  The  composite  photograph  shows 
the  fundamental  and  enduring  quality,  the  average  feature. 
In  a  certain  sense  life  and  history  are  taking  humanity's 
composite  photograph ;  but,  inordinately  loving  individ- 
ualism, each  sitter  conceitedly  demands  that  his  own 
picture  be  left  untouched  and  unblurred  by  that  of  the 
others,  and  that  his  poor  little  portrait  shall  stand  alone 
and  forever — precisely  what  the  divine  Photographer  does 
not  wish  and  will  not  permit.  Obstinacy  persists  and  God 
smashes  the  negative  to  the  ground  with  the  unanswerable 
argument  called  death.  Because  it  is  more  than  metaphor 
that  in  many  ways  the  body  may  be  likened  unto  a  photog- 
rapher's negative, — created,  for  example,  by  the  in-flashing 
of  a  heavenly  ray  of  light  among  the  highly  unstable 
chemicals  of  matter;  useless,  except  as  an  intermediate 
step  to  a  clearer  showing  of  the  character;  black  and  in- 
visible, unless  shone  through  by  the  pure  light  of  life  and 
love ;  fragile  as  glass, — and  lastly,  the  poor,  weak,  shadowy, 
dead  counterfeit  of  a  throbbing,  marvelous,  living  reality. 
The  hunger  for  an  immortality  of  the  body,  of  the  senses, 
the  lust  of  immortality,  is,  in  empty  fatuousness,  only 
comparable  to  the  mania  of  a  crazy  photographer  interested 
only  in  his  negatives,  and  who  never  "  develops  "  one ;  or 
to  the  foolishness  that  values  photographs  more  than  the 
friends  themselves.     If  we  once  get  our  spiritual  eye  fixed 


IMMORTALITY.  377 

upon  the  deep  reality  and  unity  hidden  by  the  Maia-veil- 
ings  of  individuality  and  flesh,  the  cravings  of  our  weak 
hearts  for  eternal  continuance  of  our  little  bundle  of  little- 
nesses would  fall  away  from  us  as  softly  as  the  wayward 
longings  of  childhood.  We  could  then  see  that  it  is  the 
quality  of  all  life,  the  progressive  purity,  power,  and  in- 
crease of  life  in  the  abstract,  that  become  all-important. 
Religion  would  become  the  love  and  veneration  of  Life 
the  Father  of  us ;  morality  the  cheerful  obedience  of  the 
individual  to  that  Father ;  Heaven  the  reentrance  of  the 
individual  life  into  the  great  unity.  Much  of  the  old 
religion  was  irreligious ;  its  God  a  far-away,  dead  abstrac- 
tion, not  a  living,  ever-present  love ;  its  immortality  was  at 
heart  a  desire  for  death,  its  spiritualism  at  heart  a  barbaric 
materialism.  To  this  death  of  faith  and  irreligious  religion 
comes  the  sympathetic  study  and  love  of  nature — that  is, 
science — and  reveals  to  us  the  opulence  of  life,  the  infinity 
of  intellect  in  nature,  the  inexhaustibleness  of  her  resources 
and  of  her  diversity,  her  beauty  and  her  splendor.  The 
old  materialistic  degradation  of  religion  forefelt  its  doom 
would  come  from  this  spiritualistic  revivification,  and  the 
devotees  cried  out  against  science  as  atheistic.  And  science 
found  some  foolish  enemies  in  her  own  camp  who,  mis- 
reading their  divine  book,  joined  in  the  cry — "  Nothing 
but  mechanics."  It  was  a  dismal,  short-lived  croak.  We 
now  see  that  not  only  are  science  and  her  workers  religious, 
but  without  scientific  knowledge  there  can  be  no  adequate 
idea  or  practice  of  religion.  You  can't  love  God  unless 
you  love  and  know  what  He  is  doing  in  this  universe.  The 
man  who  in  a  walk  goes  neglectfully  and  obliviously  by  a 
million  mysteries  and  wonders  that  God  has  been  toiling 
to  eliminate  for  ages, — such  a  man  cannot  lay  much  claim 
to  God's  friendship.  If  we  love  our  friend,  we  have  some 
interest  in  the  deepest  concern  of  his  life.  The  foolishest 
of  all  fears  is  the  fear  that  science  is  somehow  going  to 


378  IMMORTALITY. 

destroy  all  good  things  of  faith  and  life.  In  truth,  it  reveals 
all  good  things.  It  demonstrates  and  manifests  both  God 
and  immortality, — God  as  the  Father  of  all  life,  immortality 
as  the  surety  of  the  conservation  and  nonwastage  of  that 
life.  Much  of  the  fear  of  science  is,  as  I  have  said,  the 
fear  of  the  old  materialistic  religion  in  presence  of  the 
larger  faith  that  burns  up  its  beloved  errors.  They  who 
had  been  promised  and  had  argued  themselves  into  a 
groundless  belief  in  the  value  and  immortality  of  a  bundle 
of  sensual  appetites,  selfish  desires,  and  imperfections,  saw 
far  in  advance  that  any  large  study  of  life  and  nature  would 
dash  their  wretched  faith  to  atoms.  And  science  has  over- 
ridden this  unfaithful  faith.  "He  that  soweth  to  his  flesh 
shall  of  the  flesh  reap  corruption ;  but  he  that  soweth  to 
the  Spirit  shall  of  the  Spirit  reap  life  everlasting."  This  is 
as  true  scientifically  as  it  is  true  morally  and  religiously. 

It  required  but  a  little  study  of  neurology  and  psy- 
chology to  give  demonstration  to  this  truth.  The  products 
of  organization  die  with  disorganization.  Most,  if  not  all, 
of  what  people  mean  by  individuality  and  personal  iden- 
tity is  a  product  of  organization,  is  an  accident  of  incar- 
nation. Children  are  similar  to  each  other;  they  are 
lovable  partly  because  idiosyncrasy  and  individualism 
haven't  yet  developed.  As  we  grow  older  we  cultivate 
individuality,  until  the  very  old  are  usually  angular,  cranky, 
individual  with  a  vengeance!  Death,  thank  heaven!  is  the 
end  of  that,  the  certainty  of  a  noneternalizing  of  the  imper- 
fect. Birth  is  a  new  trial.  Incarnation  and  reincarnation 
are  the  ever-renewed  work  of  Life.  Through  the  laws  of 
heredity,  through  physiology,  sociology,  and  biology, 
science  is  tirelessly  illustrating  to  us  how  all  life  holds 
together,  how  individualism  is  valueless,  and  sacrificed  to 
the  common  weal.  There  is  no  escape,  sensual  or  super- 
sensual,  from  the  world's  great  common  life.  The  old, 
selfish  dream  of  a  heaven  apart   from    incarnation,  from 


IMMORTALITY.  379 

doing  and  becoming,  was  a  pitiful  mistake.  You  cannot 
clutch  your  cake  of  happiness  and  like  a  spoiled  child  run 
into  the  attic  of  heaven  to  eat  it  alone.  Life  will  see  to  it 
that  you  do  not  slip  off.  And  if  you  have  been  born  again 
of  the  Spirit  you  will  have  no  such  desire,  but  will  beg  for 
kindred  work  upon  the  old  earth-home. 

In  the  meantime  the  conclusion  is  clear  :  to  love  and  aid 
the  work  of  our  master  Life  we  need  not  wait  for  death. 
We  may  not  seek  our  own  salvation ;  it  is  no  matter 
whether  you  and  I  are  saved  or  not.  The  reincarnation  of 
life  is  our  work  here  and  now.  It  took  you  twenty  years 
to  fashion  out  of  a  microscopically  small  speck  of  unor- 
ganized protoplasm  your  body  and  brain.  Within  us  we 
are  to  keep  that  organization  from  cramping  and  binding 
the  life, — keep  life  as  large  and  free  and  pliant  as  possible. 
Outside  of  us  the  incarnation  goes  on  as  well,  and  every 
person  you  influence  either  for  good  or  for  ill,  thus  by  the 
fact  becomes  a  product  of  your  incarnating  work.  Every 
day  you  have  a  hundred  opportunities  to  give,  without  les- 
sening your  own  supply,  some  of  your  own  life,  to  increase 
the  quantity  and  to  elevate  the  quality  of  the  general  stock 
of  the  world's  life.  Help  the  young ;  they  inherit  the  world 
and  will  use  it  well  or  ill  according  to  your  teaching  and 
example.  Stop  cruelty  to  animals  ;  they  are  your  brothers, 
filled  with  the  same  life  as  your  own.  Fight  the  political  ruin 
we  are  preparing  for  ourselves  by  partisanship,  bribery,  and 
class-legislation.  Discourage  war  and  intemperance,  and 
lessen  the  tyranny  of  the  strong  and  wealthy.  Wage  a 
ceaseless  war  to  the  death  against  luxury,  the  poison  that 
is  eating  and  rotting  the  hearts  of  all  of  us.  Love  trees, 
meadows,  clear  brooks,  the  mountains,  and  silences  of 
Nature.  Love,  not  so  much  your  own  or  another's  indiv- 
idual life,  as  Life  itself    There  is  otherwise  no  immortality. 

The  divine  story  tells  us  that  after  measureless  suffering 
and  self-purification,  Buddha  had  gained  the  right  to  enter 


38o  IMMORTALITY. 

Nirvana.  With  compassion  filling  his  heart  he  put  his 
merited  reward  aside  and  resolved  to  remain  without  to 
teach  and  to  help  until  every  child  of  earth  should  have 
become  his  disciple,  and  until  every  disciple  should  have 
entered  Nirvana  before  him.  Such  must  be  the  resolve  of 
every  true  lover  of  life  and  of  every  right  seeker  after 
immortality. 


The  Meaning  and  The  Method  of  Life. 

A  SEARCH  FOR  RELIGION  IN  BIOLOGY. 


BY  GEORGE  M.  GOULD,  A.M.,  M.D. 


New  York:  G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons,  1893.      297  Pages.      Price,  $1.75. 


EXTRACTS  FROM  REVIEWS, 

In  strong  contrast  to  all  this  is  the  genuine  biologist's  religion  set  forth  by 
Dr.  Gould  in  the  book  before  us.  To  begin  with,  it  is  truly  a  religion,  and  no 
sham.  Whoever  believes  anything  like  it  must,  no  doubt,  be  filled  with  the 
spirit,  if  not  of  worship,  yet  of  devotion,  hearty,  tender,  and  passionate ;  and  for 
how  many  confessions  can  we  say  as  much  ?  Next,  whether  we  accept  the  doc- 
trine or  not,  we  cannot  but  grant  that  it  does  truly  spring,  by  methods  of  thought 
analogous  to  those  of  natural  philosophy,  out  of  observations  of  nature.  Insist- 
ing upon  the  absolute  distinction  between  living  and  lifeless  things,  Dr.  Gould 
sees  in  the  former  an  invisible  Life,  purposeful  and  intelligent.  This  is  his  God. 
He  names  him  Biologos.  He  is  a  regular  Aryan  nature-god,  very  wise  and 
clever,  but  existing  in  nature,  not  the  creator  of  matter,  and  very  far  from 
being  omnipotent. 

Dr.  Gould  believes  in  his  God  without  one  shade  of  doubt,  and  with  a  fervid 
joy  that  would  render  his  book  delightful  reading  even  if  it  were  not  filled  with 
interesting  suggestions  gracefully  and  strikingly  expressed.  He  really  makes 
his  doctrine  decidedly  attractive,  at  least  for  some  of  our  moods. 

It  is  little  to  say  that  there  must  be  some  truth  in  Dr.  Gould's  idea  if  there 
is  any  truth  in  religion ;  for  every  religion  worthy  the  name  represents  a  struggle 
between  the  God  and  some  dark  and  baleful  resistance. —  The  Nation, 

It  is  this  directness  of  experience,  this  presence  of  a  truly  passionate  interest 
in  the  subject,  which  makes  our  author's  work  fascinating,  and  which  ought  to 
make  it  valuable  for  many  who  will  not  accept  Dr.  Gould's  conclusions  in  his 
own  form.  These  conclusions,  as  here  stated,  are  embodied,  indeed,  rather  in 
an  excellent  cosmical  romance  than  in  a  reasoned  philosophical  doctrine.  But 
cosmical  romances  are  works  of  art  that  few  can  write,  and  the  good  cosmical 
romance  is  a  fiction  that  is  sure  to  veil  a  deeper  truth  than  perhaps  its  own  author 
imagines,  especially  if  he  himself  takes  his  legend  to  be  literally  accurate. 

In  setting  himself  this  task  our  author  appears  as  one  well  equipped  with 
empirical  illustrations  derived  from  the  biological  sciences.  His  acquaintance 
with  a  considerable  mass  of  them  is  as  close  and  fresh  as  his  own  inner  experi- 
ence of  life.  It  need  not  be  said,  however,  that  this  empirical  material  is  here 
used,  not  technically,  nor  in  the  service  of  science  for  its  own  sake,  but  rather 

381 


382  EXTRACTS  FROM  REVIEWS. 

by  way  of  illustrating  the  general  cosmical  hypothesis.  The  latter,  meanwhile, 
is  itself  presented  with  all  the  naive  and  charming  immediacy  of  a  divine  intui- 
tion.    One  does  not  prove  this  intuition  ;  one  simply  sees  its  truth. 

Our  author  is,  above  all,  ethical  in  his  concern,  and  feels  precisely  that 
opposition  between  the  ethical  and  the  all-powerful  characteristics  in  the  God  of 
tradition  which  has  so  divided  in  twain  the  religious  consciousness  of  the  ages. 
The  worth  of  the  present  intuition  lies,  then,  in  the  fruits  that  spring  from  it. 
And  there  is  something  delightful,  as  one  reads  Dr.  Gould's  glowing  pages,  in 
watching  this  fervent  student  of  current  medical  and  of  general  biological  lore, 
who, inspired  by  a  moral  devotion,  "  sees,"  "  under  the  microscope,"  the  work- 
ings of  a  God  whom  he  now  has  to  conceive  with  attributes  quite  pathetically, 
yes,  tragically,  human. 

The  air  of  what  we  have  called  "  unique  experience  "  in  this  volume  can 
be  but  faintly  suggested  by  such  a  review.  These  propounders  of  intuitions 
will  always  be  welcome  guests  in  philosophy. — Professor  Josiah  Royce,  of 
Harvard  University  ^  in  the  International  Journal  of  Ethics. 

We  differ  from  the  author  so  radically  in  one  of  his  most  important  philoso- 
phic premises,  we  agree  with  him  so  heartily  in  his  ethical  conclusions,  and, 
moreover,  we  admire  so  sincerely  his  earnest,  whole-souled,  vigorous  style,  his 
reality  and  loftiness  of  purpose,  that  our  critical  faculty  is  paralyzed. 

In  the  living  cell,  the  finite,  powerful,  but  not  all-powerful  God,  whom  Dr. 
Gould  terms  Biologos  (/3/of,  life;  Arfj  of,  the  world),  becomes  incarnate.  In  every 
living  cell  is  God  bodily  present,  and  slowly,  painfully  through  the  ages.  Life 
struggles  with  matter;  sympathy,  pity,  love,  struggle  with  the  mechanical  regu- 
larity of  the  inanimate  universe. 

Biologos  gains  for  himself  new  footholds,  he  advances  from  "  strength  to 
strength,"  as  higher  forms  of  life  appear.  At  last,  man,  the  nearest  approach  to 
God,  is  evolved,  and  every  man  becomes  God's  deputy  to  push  his  conquests  over 
matter  further,  and  finally  to  establish  his  kingdom  of  love.  Evil  exists,  not 
because  God  wills  it,  but  because  God's  power  to  prevent  it  is  limited.  Or, 
rather,  evil  is  the  result  of  the  imperfections  of  the  development  of  the  creatures 
of  Biologos;  it  is  but  another  name  for  the  obstacles  unconquered;  the  obstacles 
inherent  in  dead,  mechanically-governed  matter. 

From  this  and  other  scientific  data,  interestingly  and  forcibly  set  forth,  the 
author  develops  a  practical  creed  of  highest  value.  We  are  all  the  sons  of  God, 
all  His  servants  to  conquer  evil.  Life  is  real  and  holy ;  its  method  is  given  by 
science,  its  meaning  by  a  direct  inspiration  from  Biologos.  The  author  vigorously 
denounces  all  forms  of  selfishness,  cruelty,  pretense,  and  hypocrisy,  and  shows 
wherein  lies  the  true,  noble,  sincere,  and  loving  use  of  God's  gifts.  Sympathy 
with  and  respect  for  all  other  life  are  its  foundations. 

To  the  thousands  who,  like  the  author,  find  traditional  roads  impassable,  his 
book  will  doubtless  be  a  comfort  and  an  inspiration.  To  all,  it  will  prove  a 
source  of  spiritual  elevation;  for  it  breathes  an  immediate  consciousness  of 
God's  existence,  rare  indeed  in  our  modem  literature. —  The  American  Hebrnv. 

A  very  active-minded  and  suggestive  work.  The  author  seems  to  have 
passed  through  a  prolonged  period  of  atheistic  thought,  and  to  have  worked 
his  way  out  by  great  mental  suffering  to  a  vision  of  God  in  all  life.  His  style  is 
vigorous  and  clear,  his  observation  is  close  and  connected,  and  his  views  are 
decidedly  original. — Public  Opinion,  Washington^  D.  C. 

The  ability  and  sincerity  of  the  author  will  yet  commend  his  volume  most 
to  the  most  philosophic  minds,  who  incline  to  believe  agnosticism  as  far  from 
the  truth  as  gnosticism. —  The  Literary  World,  Boston. 


EXTRACTS  FROM  REVIEWS.  383 

We  consider  it  an  important  contribution  to  the  scientist- theological  litera- 
ture of  the  day. —  The  Bookseller,  London. 

The  writer  seeks  to  give  the  key-note  to  the  riddle  of  life.  The  peculiarities, 
course,  accidents,  and  evils  of  life  he  seeks  to  explain.  In  many  respects  the 
idea  sought  to  be  established  is  the  same  as  that  wrought  out  by  Drummond  in 
his  work  on  God  in  the  material  world.  Each  takes  the  phenomena  of  the 
world  as  observed,  and  shows  how  a  divine  power  works  through  the  observed 
material  to  attain  the  ends  to  be  accomplished. 

Perhaps  the  chapter  on  cytology,  or  theology  of  the  cell,  will  attract  most 
medical  minds.  Cell  physiology  and  pathology  are  accepted  as  fundamental 
elements  of  medicine. 

The  work  will  interest  all  who  desire  to  increase  their  knowledge  as  to  the 
meaning  of  life. — American  Lancet. 

In  every  chapter  much  will  be  found  to  help  the  willing  soul  longing  to  be 
free  so  as  to  know  God,  aware  that  in  this  knowledge  is  perfect  freedom,  and 
unaware  that  He  Himself  is  in  us,  of  us,  and  about  us — for  "  in  Him  we  live 
and  move  and  have  our  being." — Book  News,  Phila. 

The  volume  is  an  acceptable  contribution  to  the  solution  of  the  problem  of 
life.  It  is  deserving  of  careful  examination,  and  may  confirm  many  a  mind  in 
the  same  grooves  of  thought  which  his  chapters  in  some  respects  clearly  set 
forth. —  The  Transcript,  Boston. 

About  the  earnestness,  the  high  ethical  purpose,  and  the  great  ability,  on  his 
own  lines,  of  the  author  of  this  remarkable  work  there  can  be  no  question. — 
The  Christian  World,  England. 

Its  motto,  **  From  life,  through  life,  to  life,"  gives  the  key-note  of  its  tone 
— one  of  cheer  and  encouragement — a  refreshing  contrast  to  the  philosophy  of 
pessimism  and  despair,  so  prevalent  for  many  years  past  in  works  assuming  to 
be  guides  of  scientific  thought. 

One  of  the  greatest  merits  and  clearness  of  the  book  is  its  manly  and  vigorous 
protest  against  the  crying  evils  of  the  age — its  rampant  materialism,  its  suicidal 
love  of  luxury,  gross  sensualism,  ever-increasing  inefficiency  and  self-indulgence. 

We  hail  it  as  an  omen  of  good  in  our  future  progress  toward  the  light — an 
important  link  in  the  chain  of  evidence  binding  earth  to  heaven.  We  would 
urge  the  intelligent  and  earnest  general  reader  not  to  be  deterred  by  the  technical 
phraseology  of  many  of  its  passages  from  a  careful  perusal  of  the  entire  work. 
It  will  amply  repay  him  for  the  effort.  It  will  leave  the  impress  for  good  on 
both  heart  and  mind,  enlarging  the  views  and  broadening  one's  sympathies 
with  all  things  stamped  with  the  image  of  the  all-loving  Father. —  Ihe  Times, 
Richmond,  Fa. 

It  is  a  work  worth  careful  study,  and  while  at  a  cursory  glance  it  may 
appear  dull,  one  has  only  to  read  a  few  pages  to  realize  the  wealth  of  thought 
contained  between  its  covers. —  The  Herald,  Rochester,  N.  Y. 

Dr.  Gould's  work  is  a  sincere  and  enthusiastic  endeavor  to  bring  vividly 
before  the  mind  the  evidencesof  God's  existence  and  the  method  of  His  activity 
apparent  in  the  world  of  living  things.  He  takes  for  his  mottoes,  "  From  life, 
through  life,  to  life,"  and  "  the  Word  became  flesh,"  of  which  this  volume 
attempts  to  be  an  exposition. 

In  attempting  thus  to  indicate  the  spiritual  principles  underlying  the  world 
of  nature.  Dr.  Gould's  book  may  be  considered  as  in  some  sense  a  counterpart 
to  Drummond's  exposition  of  the  natural  law  in  the  spiritual  world. —  The 
Press,  Burlington,  Vt. 


384  EXTRACTS  FROM  REVIEWS. 

At  the  present  moment  there  is  no  question  of  a  purely  theoretic  character 
which  so  profoundly  agitates  thinkers  as  that  which  has  reference  to  a  recon- 
ciliation of  the  traditional  faiths  of  mankind  with  the  startling  revelations  of 
scientific  investigation  ;  and  Dr.  Gould  deserves  sincere  thanks  for  the  able  and 
scholarly  way  in  which  he  here  meets  the  issue  and  clears  the  ground  of  en- 
cumbering side  questions  and  logical  impediments. 

Dr.  Gould  speaks  as  a  scientist,  but  always  as  one  whose  ear  has  been  sen- 
sitive to  the  still,  small  voices  of  nature,  no  less  than  to  the  utterances  of  her 
unalterable  laws. —  The  Bulletin^  Phila. 

The  book  is  one  of  deep  thought,  the  product  of  unwearied  study  of  life 
itself  and  the  most  intense  and  genuine  conviction,  and  will  well  repay  the 
reader. — Book  News,  Phila. 

These  somewhat  startling  theories  will  doubtless  expose  the  author  to  acrid 
criticism ;  but  they  should  acquit  him  of  the  sin  of  mental  plagiarism,  for  they 
are  the  unique  product  of  his  own  brain.  That  circumstance,  however,  should 
not  deter  the  reader  from  dipping  into  the  book,  because,  though  it  is  full  of 
strange  conceits,  it  contains  much  that  is  suggestive  and  interesting.  The  author 
is  plainly  a  man  who  has  brought  to  bear  a  cultivated  intelligence  and  a 
thoughtful  and  inquiring  mind  on  the  problems  of  the  here  and  the  hereafter. — 
New  York  Tribune. 

It  is  a  matter  for  congratulation  that  here  and  there  is  to  be  found  a  man 
who  will  put  aside  his  desire  for  the  fame  that  the  many  might  give  him,  and 
seek  for  his  reward  in  the  appreciation  of  the  few.  Dr.  Gould  has  studied  the 
facts  before  him  in  his  search  for  religion  in  biology,  and  has  written  a  really 
entertaining  book. — Post,  Chicago. 

When  the  reader  has  got  through  with  this  book  he  will  admit  that  Dr. 
Gould  has  not  made  his  search  for  religion  in  the  realm  of  biology  wholly  in 
vain.  For  apologetic  purposes  the  work  will  be  found  highly  useful. — New 
York  Christian  at  Work. 

Dr.  Gould  has  attempted  to  discover  the  secret  of  nature  and  of  human  life. 
He  brings  to  the  task  intelligence  and  skill.  We  have  read  his  argument  with 
sympathetic  interest,  and,  although  it  seems  to  us  inadequate,  it  has  a  peculiar 
poetic  power  of  fascination.  The  argument  tends  toward  the  faith  of  optimism  ; 
and,  although  it  leaves  us  with  a  dualism  that  cannot  be  resolved  into  unity,  it 
is  in  the  direction  of  a  sane  and  sound  explanation  of  the  universe. —  The  Chris- 
tian Regitter. 

His  work  is  evidently  sincere,  the  result  of  persistent  study  and  the  effort  of 
a  candid  and  truthful  mind.  His  volume  is  an  indication  of  the  longing  every- 
where evident  to  reconcile  the  essentials  of  the  old  faith  with  new  knowledge  ; 
if  the  effort  is  incoherent  it  is  at  least  resolute  and  genuine,  and  deserves  the 
consideration  that  should  always  be  accorded  to  honest  endeavor.  —  Tli^ 
National  Baptist,  Philadelphia. 

The  work  is  that  of  a  writer  who  knows  his  own  mind  and  has  no  hesitation 
in  combating  received  opinions  which  seem  to  him  erroneous.  It  is  a  scholarly, 
incisive  work. — Detroit  Free  Press. 

We  recognize  the  abilty  and  learning,  the  sincerity  and  suggestiveness,  of 
the  volume. — Zion's  Herald. 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  AT  LOS  ANGELES 

THE  UNIVERSITY  LIBRARY 

This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below 


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